Systems and methods for providing a smart group

ABSTRACT

The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for establishing and applying a policy group to control a user&#39;s access to an identified resource. A policy group representing an aggregate of one or more access configurations for a user to access one or more identified resources may be established via a policy manager. The policy group may include a login point component representing an entry point to access the identified resource. The login point may be configured via the policy manager to specify a uniform resource locator for the entry point. One or more authentication and authorization methods may be selected for the login point component. The device may receive a request to access the uniform resource locator. The device may initiate the policy group for evaluation. The device may initiate, with the user, one or more authentication and authorization methods specified by the login point component.

RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a continuation of and claims priority to, and thebenefit of, U.S. Non-provisional application Ser. No. 12/840,632entitled “Systems and Methods For Providing a Smart Group”, filed onJul. 21, 2010, and which is incorporated herein by reference in itsentirety for all purposes.

FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

The present application generally relates to controlling access toresources in connection with data communication networks. In particular,the present application relates to systems and methods for configuringand applying policy groups for making access control decisions.

BACKGROUND

The proliferation of communications and data networks have considerablyincreased availability of resources such as files, applications andservices to a large number of users. To efficiently manage and protectthese resources, various systems may be put in place to limit or controlaccess to these resources. Access to certain networks and theirresources may be limited to users having access rights to thesenetworks. For example, a user requesting access to a resource may needto be authenticated. In some embodiments, limited resources may bedistributed to users based on availability of the resources and/or otherfactors. As the types of resources, networks, protection schemes anddistribution methods increase, administration of network resources hasbecome increasingly complicated. For example, conventional systems mayinclude network components such as access gateways, firewalls, andauthentication, authorization and auditing (AAA) servers, to providevarious functions.

BRIEF SUMMARY

The present application is directed to methods and systems for providingpolicy groups for controlling access to network resources. A policygroup may be configured to aggregate one or more access configurationsin connection with controlling access to a network resource. A policygroup can be used to logically manage the one or more accessconfigurations. The access configurations of a policy group may pertainto any combination of one or more of a logon point, identification of aresource and available permissions for the resource, a device profile,and a group name. Each logon point may be associated with at least oneauthentication method and an authorization method. A network device oraccess gateway applying a policy group may grant a particular level ofaccess to a requested resource based on the evaluation of the accessconfigurations. A user at a client device may attempt to logon to asession to access a resource. The user may access a logon interface viaa uniform resource locator (URL) provided by a logon point. The user maybe authenticated and the user's authorization rights evaluated. Based onthe authentication and/or authorization, a group name may be identifiedapplicable to the user. The system may identify one or more policygroups based at least in part on the group name. The client device ofthe user may also be evaluated against a device profile associated withthe policy group. Based on the identified group name, authentication,authorization and/or device profile evaluation, the policy group maygrant the user access to one or more resources.

In one aspect, the present invention is related to a method forestablishing a policy group to aggregate access configurations tocontrol a user's access to an identified resource. The method includesestablishing, via a policy manager executing on a device intermediary toa plurality of clients and one or more servers, a policy grouprepresenting an aggregate of one or more access configurations for auser to access via the device one or more identified resources of theone or more servers. The policy group may include a login pointcomponent representing an entry point to access the one or moreidentified resources. The method may include configuring, via the policymanager, the login point component to specify a uniform resource locatorfor the entry point. The method may include selecting, via the policymanager, one or more authentication methods for the login pointcomponent. The method may include identifying, via the policy manager,one or more authorization methods for the login point component based onthe one or more authentication methods.

In some embodiments, the method includes establishing the policy groupto have a device profile component with the login point component. Thedevice profile component may identify one or more end point analyses toperform for access via the entry point of the login point component. Themethod may include establishing a second login point component for thepolicy group and configuring a second uniform resource locator (URL) asthe entry point. The method may include specifying two authenticationmethods for dual authentication for the login point component. Thepolicy manager may limit selection of authorization methods based on theselection of the one or more authentication methods. In one embodiment,the method may include disabling the login point component, in which thepolicy group may become disabled.

In some embodiments, the method includes specifying for the policy groupone or more device profiles. Each of the one or more device profiles mayidentify one or more types of end point analysis to perform on a deviceof the user. The method may include specifying for the policy group atype of resource of the one or more identified resources that is allowedaccess. The method may include specifying for the policy group a type ofresource of the one or more identified resources that is denied access.The method may include specifying for the login point component one ormore parameters that override corresponding parameters of the device.

In another aspect, the present invention is related to a method forapplying a policy group to control a user's access to an identifiedresource. A device intermediary to a plurality of clients and one ormore servers may identify a policy group. The policy group may representan aggregate of one or more access configurations for a user to accessvia the device one or more identified resources of the one or moreservers. The policy group may include a login point componentrepresenting an entry point to access the one or more identifiedresources. The device may receive a request of the user to access auniform resource locator corresponding to the entry point specified bythe login point component. The device may initiate, with the user, oneor more authentication methods specified by the login point component.To access to the one or more identified resources, the device may applyone or more authorization methods specified by the login point componentbased on the one or more authentication methods.

In some embodiments, the method includes identifying a device profilecomponent of the policy group. The device profile component may specifyone or more device profiles for access via the entry point of the loginpoint component. The device may receive the uniform resource locatoridentified as the entry point to a second login component of the policygroup. The device may initiate two authentication methods specified bythe login point component for dual authentication. In some embodiments,the selection of an authorization method is limited to the specificationof the one or more authentication methods. The device may perform, on asecond device of the user, one or more types of end point analysisspecified by one or more device profiles of the device profilecomponent. The device may grant access to a type of resource of the oneor more identified resources. The device may deny access to a type ofresource of the one or more identified resources. The device mayoverride one or more parameters of the device as specified by the policygroup.

In another aspect, the present invention is related to a system forproviding a policy group to aggregate access configurations to control aspecific user's access to a specific resource. The system may include adevice intermediary to a plurality of clients and one or more servers. Apolicy manager of the device may establish a policy group. The policygroup may represent an aggregate of one or more access configurationsfor a user to access via the device one or more identified resources ofthe one or more servers. A login point component of the policy group mayrepresent an entry point to access the one or more identified resources.The login point component may specify a uniform resource locator for theentry point. One or more authentication methods for the login pointcomponent may be specified via the policy manager. One or moreauthorization methods may be identified, via the policy manager, for thelogin point component based on the one or more authentication methods.

The details of various embodiments of the invention are set forth in theaccompanying drawings and the description below.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

The foregoing and other objects, aspects, features, and advantages ofthe invention will become more apparent and better understood byreferring to the following description taken in conjunction with theaccompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of an embodiment of a network environment fora client to access a server via an appliance;

FIG. 1B is a block diagram of an embodiment of an environment fordelivering a computing environment from a server to a client via anappliance;

FIG. 1C is a block diagram of another embodiment of an environment fordelivering a computing environment from a server to a client via anappliance;

FIG. 1D is a block diagram of another embodiment of an environment fordelivering a computing environment from a server to a client via anappliance;

FIGS. 1E-1H are block diagrams of embodiments of a computing device;

FIG. 2A is a block diagram of an embodiment of an appliance forprocessing communications between a client and a server;

FIG. 2B is a block diagram of another embodiment of an appliance foroptimizing, accelerating, load-balancing and routing communicationsbetween a client and a server;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a client for communicatingwith a server via the appliance;

FIG. 4A is a block diagram of an embodiment of a virtualizationenvironment;

FIG. 4B is a block diagram of another embodiment of a virtualizationenvironment;

FIG. 4C is a block diagram of an embodiment of a virtualized appliance;

FIG. 5A are block diagrams of embodiments of approaches to implementingparallelism in a multi-core network appliance;

FIG. 5B is a block diagram of an embodiment of a system utilizing amulti-core network application;

FIG. 5C is a block diagram of an embodiment of an aspect of a multi-corenetwork appliance;

FIG. 6A is a block diagram of an embodiment of a system for providing apolicy group;

FIG. 6B is a block diagram of another embodiment of a system forproviding a policy group; and

FIG. 6C is a flow diagram of an embodiment of a method for providing apolicy group.

The features and advantages of the present invention will become moreapparent from the detailed description set forth below when taken inconjunction with the drawings, in which like reference charactersidentify corresponding elements throughout. In the drawings, likereference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar,and/or structurally similar elements.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

For purposes of reading the description of the various embodiments ofthe present invention below, the following descriptions of the sectionsof the specification and their respective contents may be helpful:

-   -   Section A describes a network environment and computing        environment which may be useful for practicing embodiments        described herein;    -   Section B describes embodiments of systems and methods for        delivering a computing environment to a remote user;    -   Section C describes embodiments of systems and methods for        accelerating communications between a client and a server;    -   Section D describes embodiments of systems and methods for        virtualizing an application delivery controller;    -   Section E describes embodiments of systems and methods for        providing a multi-core architecture and environment; and    -   Section F describes embodiments of systems and methods for        providing a policy group to control access to a resource.        A. Network and Computing Environment

Prior to discussing the specifics of embodiments of the systems andmethods of an appliance and/or client, it may be helpful to discuss thenetwork and computing environments in which such embodiments may bedeployed. Referring now to FIG. 1A, an embodiment of a networkenvironment is depicted. In brief overview, the network environmentcomprises one or more clients 102 a-102 n (also generally referred to aslocal machine(s) 102, or client(s) 102) in communication with one ormore servers 106 a-106 n (also generally referred to as server(s) 106,or remote machine(s) 106) via one or more networks 104, 104′ (generallyreferred to as network 104). In some embodiments, a client 102communicates with a server 106 via an appliance 200.

Although FIG. 1A shows a network 104 and a network 104′ between theclients 102 and the servers 106, the clients 102 and the servers 106 maybe on the same network 104. The networks 104 and 104′ can be the sametype of network or different types of networks. The network 104 and/orthe network 104′ can be a local-area network (LAN), such as a companyIntranet, a metropolitan area network (MAN), or a wide area network(WAN), such as the Internet or the World Wide Web. In one embodiment,network 104′ may be a private network and network 104 may be a publicnetwork. In some embodiments, network 104 may be a private network andnetwork 104′ a public network. In another embodiment, networks 104 and104′ may both be private networks. In some embodiments, clients 102 maybe located at a branch office of a corporate enterprise communicatingvia a WAN connection over the network 104 to the servers 106 located ata corporate data center.

The network 104 and/or 104′ be any type and/or form of network and mayinclude any of the following: a point to point network, a broadcastnetwork, a wide area network, a local area network, a telecommunicationsnetwork, a data communication network, a computer network, an ATM(Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network, a SONET (Synchronous OpticalNetwork) network, a SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) network, awireless network and a wireline network. In some embodiments, thenetwork 104 may comprise a wireless link, such as an infrared channel orsatellite band. The topology of the network 104 and/or 104′ may be abus, star, or ring network topology. The network 104 and/or 104′ andnetwork topology may be of any such network or network topology as knownto those ordinarily skilled in the art capable of supporting theoperations described herein.

As shown in FIG. 1A, the appliance 200, which also may be referred to asan interface unit 200 or gateway 200, is shown between the networks 104and 104′. In some embodiments, the appliance 200 may be located onnetwork 104. For example, a branch office of a corporate enterprise maydeploy an appliance 200 at the branch office. In other embodiments, theappliance 200 may be located on network 104′. For example, an appliance200 may be located at a corporate data center. In yet anotherembodiment, a plurality of appliances 200 may be deployed on network104. In some embodiments, a plurality of appliances 200 may be deployedon network 104′. In one embodiment, a first appliance 200 communicateswith a second appliance 200′. In other embodiments, the appliance 200could be a part of any client 102 or server 106 on the same or differentnetwork 104,104′ as the client 102. One or more appliances 200 may belocated at any point in the network or network communications pathbetween a client 102 and a server 106.

In some embodiments, the appliance 200 comprises any of the networkdevices manufactured by Citrix Systems, Inc. of Ft. Lauderdale Fla.,referred to as Citrix NetScaler devices. In other embodiments, theappliance 200 includes any of the product embodiments referred to asWebAccelerator and BigIP manufactured by F5 Networks, Inc. of Seattle,Wash. In another embodiment, the appliance 205 includes any of the DXacceleration device platforms and/or the SSL VPN series of devices, suchas SA 700, SA 2000, SA 4000, and SA 6000 devices manufactured by JuniperNetworks, Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. In yet another embodiment, theappliance 200 includes any application acceleration and/or securityrelated appliances and/or software manufactured by Cisco Systems, Inc.of San Jose, Calif., such as the Cisco ACE Application Control EngineModule service software and network modules, and Cisco AVS SeriesApplication Velocity System.

In one embodiment, the system may include multiple, logically-groupedservers 106. In these embodiments, the logical group of servers may bereferred to as a server farm 38. In some of these embodiments, theserves 106 may be geographically dispersed. In some cases, a farm 38 maybe administered as a single entity. In other embodiments, the serverfarm 38 comprises a plurality of server farms 38. In one embodiment, theserver farm executes one or more applications on behalf of one or moreclients 102.

The servers 106 within each farm 38 can be heterogeneous. One or more ofthe servers 106 can operate according to one type of operating systemplatform (e.g., WINDOWS NT, manufactured by Microsoft Corp. of Redmond,Wash.), while one or more of the other servers 106 can operate onaccording to another type of operating system platform (e.g., Unix orLinux). The servers 106 of each farm 38 do not need to be physicallyproximate to another server 106 in the same farm 38. Thus, the group ofservers 106 logically grouped as a farm 38 may be interconnected using awide-area network (WAN) connection or medium-area network (MAN)connection. For example, a farm 38 may include servers 106 physicallylocated in different continents or different regions of a continent,country, state, city, campus, or room. Data transmission speeds betweenservers 106 in the farm 38 can be increased if the servers 106 areconnected using a local-area network (LAN) connection or some form ofdirect connection.

Servers 106 may be referred to as a file server, application server, webserver, proxy server, or gateway server. In some embodiments, a server106 may have the capacity to function as either an application server oras a master application server. In one embodiment, a server 106 mayinclude an Active Directory. The clients 102 may also be referred to asclient nodes or endpoints. In some embodiments, a client 102 has thecapacity to function as both a client node seeking access toapplications on a server and as an application server providing accessto hosted applications for other clients 102 a-102 n.

In some embodiments, a client 102 communicates with a server 106. In oneembodiment, the client 102 communicates directly with one of the servers106 in a farm 38. In another embodiment, the client 102 executes aprogram neighborhood application to communicate with a server 106 in afarm 38. In still another embodiment, the server 106 provides thefunctionality of a master node. In some embodiments, the client 102communicates with the server 106 in the farm 38 through a network 104.Over the network 104, the client 102 can, for example, request executionof various applications hosted by the servers 106 a-106 n in the farm 38and receive output of the results of the application execution fordisplay. In some embodiments, only the master node provides thefunctionality required to identify and provide address informationassociated with a server 106′ hosting a requested application.

In one embodiment, the server 106 provides functionality of a webserver. In another embodiment, the server 106 a receives requests fromthe client 102, forwards the requests to a second server 106 b andresponds to the request by the client 102 with a response to the requestfrom the server 106 b. In still another embodiment, the server 106acquires an enumeration of applications available to the client 102 andaddress information associated with a server 106 hosting an applicationidentified by the enumeration of applications. In yet anotherembodiment, the server 106 presents the response to the request to theclient 102 using a web interface. In one embodiment, the client 102communicates directly with the server 106 to access the identifiedapplication. In another embodiment, the client 102 receives applicationoutput data, such as display data, generated by an execution of theidentified application on the server 106.

Referring now to FIG. 1B, an embodiment of a network environmentdeploying multiple appliances 200 is depicted. A first appliance 200 maybe deployed on a first network 104 and a second appliance 200′ on asecond network 104′. For example a corporate enterprise may deploy afirst appliance 200 at a branch office and a second appliance 200′ at adata center. In another embodiment, the first appliance 200 and secondappliance 200′ are deployed on the same network 104 or network 104. Forexample, a first appliance 200 may be deployed for a first server farm38, and a second appliance 200 may be deployed for a second server farm38′. In another example, a first appliance 200 may be deployed at afirst branch office while the second appliance 200′ is deployed at asecond branch office’. In some embodiments, the first appliance 200 andsecond appliance 200′ work in cooperation or in conjunction with eachother to accelerate network traffic or the delivery of application anddata between a client and a server

Referring now to FIG. 1C, another embodiment of a network environmentdeploying the appliance 200 with one or more other types of appliances,such as between one or more WAN optimization appliance 205, 205′ isdepicted. For example a first WAN optimization appliance 205 is shownbetween networks 104 and 104′ and a second WAN optimization appliance205′ may be deployed between the appliance 200 and one or more servers106. By way of example, a corporate enterprise may deploy a first WANoptimization appliance 205 at a branch office and a second WANoptimization appliance 205′ at a data center. In some embodiments, theappliance 205 may be located on network 104′. In other embodiments, theappliance 205′ may be located on network 104. In some embodiments, theappliance 205′ may be located on network 104′ or network 104″. In oneembodiment, the appliance 205 and 205′ are on the same network. Inanother embodiment, the appliance 205 and 205′ are on differentnetworks. In another example, a first WAN optimization appliance 205 maybe deployed for a first server farm 38 and a second WAN optimizationappliance 205′ for a second server farm 38′

In one embodiment, the appliance 205 is a device for accelerating,optimizing or otherwise improving the performance, operation, or qualityof service of any type and form of network traffic, such as traffic toand/or from a WAN connection. In some embodiments, the appliance 205 isa performance enhancing proxy. In other embodiments, the appliance 205is any type and form of WAN optimization or acceleration device,sometimes also referred to as a WAN optimization controller. In oneembodiment, the appliance 205 is any of the product embodiments referredto as WANScaler manufactured by Citrix Systems, Inc. of Ft. Lauderdale,Fla. In other embodiments, the appliance 205 includes any of the productembodiments referred to as BIG-IP link controller and WANjetmanufactured by F5 Networks, Inc. of Seattle, Wash. In anotherembodiment, the appliance 205 includes any of the WX and WXC WANacceleration device platforms manufactured by Juniper Networks, Inc. ofSunnyvale, Calif. In some embodiments, the appliance 205 includes any ofthe steelhead line of WAN optimization appliances manufactured byRiverbed Technology of San Francisco, Calif. In other embodiments, theappliance 205 includes any of the WAN related devices manufactured byExpand Networks Inc. of Roseland, N.J. In one embodiment, the appliance205 includes any of the WAN related appliances manufactured by PacketeerInc. of Cupertino, Calif., such as the PacketShaper, iShared, and SkyXproduct embodiments provided by Packeteer. In yet another embodiment,the appliance 205 includes any WAN related appliances and/or softwaremanufactured by Cisco Systems, Inc. of San Jose, Calif., such as theCisco Wide Area Network Application Services software and networkmodules, and Wide Area Network engine appliances.

In one embodiment, the appliance 205 provides application and dataacceleration services for branch-office or remote offices. In oneembodiment, the appliance 205 includes optimization of Wide Area FileServices (WAFS). In another embodiment, the appliance 205 acceleratesthe delivery of files, such as via the Common Internet File System(CIFS) protocol. In other embodiments, the appliance 205 providescaching in memory and/or storage to accelerate delivery of applicationsand data. In one embodiment, the appliance 205 provides compression ofnetwork traffic at any level of the network stack or at any protocol ornetwork layer. In another embodiment, the appliance 205 providestransport layer protocol optimizations, flow control, performanceenhancements or modifications and/or management to accelerate deliveryof applications and data over a WAN connection. For example, in oneembodiment, the appliance 205 provides Transport Control Protocol (TCP)optimizations. In other embodiments, the appliance 205 providesoptimizations, flow control, performance enhancements or modificationsand/or management for any session or application layer protocol.

In another embodiment, the appliance 205 encoded any type and form ofdata or information into custom or standard TCP and/or IP header fieldsor option fields of network packet to announce presence, functionalityor capability to another appliance 205′. In another embodiment, anappliance 205′ may communicate with another appliance 205′ using dataencoded in both TCP and/or IP header fields or options. For example, theappliance may use TCP option(s) or IP header fields or options tocommunicate one or more parameters to be used by the appliances 205,205′ in performing functionality, such as WAN acceleration, or forworking in conjunction with each other.

In some embodiments, the appliance 200 preserves any of the informationencoded in TCP and/or IP header and/or option fields communicatedbetween appliances 205 and 205′. For example, the appliance 200 mayterminate a transport layer connection traversing the appliance 200,such as a transport layer connection from between a client and a servertraversing appliances 205 and 205′. In one embodiment, the appliance 200identifies and preserves any encoded information in a transport layerpacket transmitted by a first appliance 205 via a first transport layerconnection and communicates a transport layer packet with the encodedinformation to a second appliance 205′ via a second transport layerconnection.

Referring now to FIG. 1D, a network environment for delivering and/oroperating a computing environment on a client 102 is depicted. In someembodiments, a server 106 includes an application delivery system 190for delivering a computing environment or an application and/or datafile to one or more clients 102. In brief overview, a client 10 is incommunication with a server 106 via network 104, 104′ and appliance 200.For example, the client 102 may reside in a remote office of a company,e.g., a branch office, and the server 106 may reside at a corporate datacenter. The client 102 comprises a client agent 120, and a computingenvironment 15. The computing environment 15 may execute or operate anapplication that accesses, processes or uses a data file. The computingenvironment 15, application and/or data file may be delivered via theappliance 200 and/or the server 106.

In some embodiments, the appliance 200 accelerates delivery of acomputing environment 15, or any portion thereof, to a client 102. Inone embodiment, the appliance 200 accelerates the delivery of thecomputing environment 15 by the application delivery system 190. Forexample, the embodiments described herein may be used to acceleratedelivery of a streaming application and data file processable by theapplication from a central corporate data center to a remote userlocation, such as a branch office of the company. In another embodiment,the appliance 200 accelerates transport layer traffic between a client102 and a server 106. The appliance 200 may provide accelerationtechniques for accelerating any transport layer payload from a server106 to a client 102, such as: 1) transport layer connection pooling, 2)transport layer connection multiplexing, 3) transport control protocolbuffering, 4) compression and 5) caching. In some embodiments, theappliance 200 provides load balancing of servers 106 in responding torequests from clients 102. In other embodiments, the appliance 200 actsas a proxy or access server to provide access to the one or more servers106. In another embodiment, the appliance 200 provides a secure virtualprivate network connection from a first network 104 of the client 102 tothe second network 104′ of the server 106, such as an SSL VPNconnection. It yet other embodiments, the appliance 200 providesapplication firewall security, control and management of the connectionand communications between a client 102 and a server 106.

In some embodiments, the application delivery management system 190provides application delivery techniques to deliver a computingenvironment to a desktop of a user, remote or otherwise, based on aplurality of execution methods and based on any authentication andauthorization policies applied via a policy engine 195. With thesetechniques, a remote user may obtain a computing environment and accessto server stored applications and data files from any network connecteddevice 100. In one embodiment, the application delivery system 190 mayreside or execute on a server 106. In another embodiment, theapplication delivery system 190 may reside or execute on a plurality ofservers 106 a-106 n. In some embodiments, the application deliverysystem 190 may execute in a server farm 38. In one embodiment, theserver 106 executing the application delivery system 190 may also storeor provide the application and data file. In another embodiment, a firstset of one or more servers 106 may execute the application deliverysystem 190, and a different server 106 n may store or provide theapplication and data file. In some embodiments, each of the applicationdelivery system 190, the application, and data file may reside or belocated on different servers. In yet another embodiment, any portion ofthe application delivery system 190 may reside, execute or be stored onor distributed to the appliance 200, or a plurality of appliances.

The client 102 may include a computing environment 15 for executing anapplication that uses or processes a data file. The client 102 vianetworks 104, 104′ and appliance 200 may request an application and datafile from the server 106. In one embodiment, the appliance 200 mayforward a request from the client 102 to the server 106. For example,the client 102 may not have the application and data file stored oraccessible locally. In response to the request, the application deliverysystem 190 and/or server 106 may deliver the application and data fileto the client 102. For example, in one embodiment, the server 106 maytransmit the application as an application stream to operate incomputing environment 15 on client 102.

In some embodiments, the application delivery system 190 comprises anyportion of the Citrix Access Suite™ by Citrix Systems, Inc., such as theMetaFrame or Citrix Presentation Server™ and/or any of the Microsoft®Windows Terminal Services manufactured by the Microsoft Corporation. Inone embodiment, the application delivery system 190 may deliver one ormore applications to clients 102 or users via a remote-display protocolor otherwise via remote-based or server-based computing. In anotherembodiment, the application delivery system 190 may deliver one or moreapplications to clients or users via steaming of the application.

In one embodiment, the application delivery system 190 includes a policyengine 195 for controlling and managing the access to, selection ofapplication execution methods and the delivery of applications. In someembodiments, the policy engine 195 determines the one or moreapplications a user or client 102 may access. In another embodiment, thepolicy engine 195 determines how the application should be delivered tothe user or client 102, e.g., the method of execution. In someembodiments, the application delivery system 190 provides a plurality ofdelivery techniques from which to select a method of applicationexecution, such as a server-based computing, streaming or delivering theapplication locally to the client 120 for local execution.

In one embodiment, a client 102 requests execution of an applicationprogram and the application delivery system 190 comprising a server 106selects a method of executing the application program. In someembodiments, the server 106 receives credentials from the client 102. Inanother embodiment, the server 106 receives a request for an enumerationof available applications from the client 102. In one embodiment, inresponse to the request or receipt of credentials, the applicationdelivery system 190 enumerates a plurality of application programsavailable to the client 102. The application delivery system 190receives a request to execute an enumerated application. The applicationdelivery system 190 selects one of a predetermined number of methods forexecuting the enumerated application, for example, responsive to apolicy of a policy engine. The application delivery system 190 mayselect a method of execution of the application enabling the client 102to receive application-output data generated by execution of theapplication program on a server 106. The application delivery system 190may select a method of execution of the application enabling the localmachine 10 to execute the application program locally after retrieving aplurality of application files comprising the application. In yetanother embodiment, the application delivery system 190 may select amethod of execution of the application to stream the application via thenetwork 104 to the client 102.

A client 102 may execute, operate or otherwise provide an application,which can be any type and/or form of software, program, or executableinstructions such as any type and/or form of web browser, web-basedclient, client-server application, a thin-client computing client, anActiveX control, or a Java applet, or any other type and/or form ofexecutable instructions capable of executing on client 102. In someembodiments, the application may be a server-based or a remote-basedapplication executed on behalf of the client 102 on a server 106. In oneembodiments the server 106 may display output to the client 102 usingany thin-client or remote-display protocol, such as the IndependentComputing Architecture (ICA) protocol manufactured by Citrix Systems,Inc. of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. or the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)manufactured by the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Theapplication can use any type of protocol and it can be, for example, anHTTP client, an FTP client, an Oscar client, or a Telnet client. Inother embodiments, the application comprises any type of softwarerelated to VoIP communications, such as a soft IP telephone. In furtherembodiments, the application comprises any application related toreal-time data communications, such as applications for streaming videoand/or audio.

In some embodiments, the server 106 or a server farm 38 may be runningone or more applications, such as an application providing a thin-clientcomputing or remote display presentation application. In one embodiment,the server 106 or server farm 38 executes as an application, any portionof the Citrix Access Suite™ by Citrix Systems, Inc., such as theMetaFrame or Citrix Presentation Server™, and/or any of the Microsoft®Windows Terminal Services manufactured by the Microsoft Corporation. Inone embodiment, the application is an ICA client, developed by CitrixSystems, Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. In other embodiments, theapplication includes a Remote Desktop (RDP) client, developed byMicrosoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Also, the server 106 may run anapplication, which for example, may be an application server providingemail services such as Microsoft Exchange manufactured by the MicrosoftCorporation of Redmond, Wash., a web or Internet server, or a desktopsharing server, or a collaboration server. In some embodiments, any ofthe applications may comprise any type of hosted service or products,such as GoToMeeting™ provided by Citrix Online Division, Inc. of SantaBarbara, Calif., WebEx™ provided by WebEx, Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif.,or Microsoft Office Live Meeting provided by Microsoft Corporation ofRedmond, Wash.

Still referring to FIG. 1D, an embodiment of the network environment mayinclude a monitoring server 106A. The monitoring server 106A may includeany type and form performance monitoring service 198. The performancemonitoring service 198 may include monitoring, measurement and/ormanagement software and/or hardware, including data collection,aggregation, analysis, management and reporting. In one embodiment, theperformance monitoring service 198 includes one or more monitoringagents 197. The monitoring agent 197 includes any software, hardware orcombination thereof for performing monitoring, measurement and datacollection activities on a device, such as a client 102, server 106 oran appliance 200, 205. In some embodiments, the monitoring agent 197includes any type and form of script, such as Visual Basic script, orJavascript. In one embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 executestransparently to any application and/or user of the device. In someembodiments, the monitoring agent 197 is installed and operatedunobtrusively to the application or client. In yet another embodiment,the monitoring agent 197 is installed and operated without anyinstrumentation for the application or device.

In some embodiments, the monitoring agent 197 monitors, measures andcollects data on a predetermined frequency. In other embodiments, themonitoring agent 197 monitors, measures and collects data based upondetection of any type and form of event. For example, the monitoringagent 197 may collect data upon detection of a request for a web page orreceipt of an HTTP response. In another example, the monitoring agent197 may collect data upon detection of any user input events, such as amouse click. The monitoring agent 197 may report or provide anymonitored, measured or collected data to the monitoring service 198. Inone embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 transmits information to themonitoring service 198 according to a schedule or a predeterminedfrequency. In another embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 transmitsinformation to the monitoring service 198 upon detection of an event.

In some embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent197 performs monitoring and performance measurement of any networkresource or network infrastructure element, such as a client, server,server farm, appliance 200, appliance 205, or network connection. In oneembodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197performs monitoring and performance measurement of any transport layerconnection, such as a TCP or UDP connection. In another embodiment, themonitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors and measuresnetwork latency. In yet one embodiment, the monitoring service 198and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors and measures bandwidth utilization.

In other embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent197 monitors and measures end-user response times. In some embodiments,the monitoring service 198 performs monitoring and performancemeasurement of an application. In another embodiment, the monitoringservice 198 and/or monitoring agent 197 performs monitoring andperformance measurement of any session or connection to the application.In one embodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent197 monitors and measures performance of a browser. In anotherembodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197monitors and measures performance of HTTP based transactions. In someembodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197monitors and measures performance of a Voice over IP (VoIP) applicationor session. In other embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/ormonitoring agent 197 monitors and measures performance of a remotedisplay protocol application, such as an ICA client or RDP client. Inyet another embodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoringagent 197 monitors and measures performance of any type and form ofstreaming media. In still a further embodiment, the monitoring service198 and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors and measures performance of ahosted application or a Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) delivery model.

In some embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent197 performs monitoring and performance measurement of one or moretransactions, requests or responses related to application. In otherembodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197monitors and measures any portion of an application layer stack, such asany .NET or J2EE calls. In one embodiment, the monitoring service 198and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors and measures database or SQLtransactions. In yet another embodiment, the monitoring service 198and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors and measures any method, functionor application programming interface (API) call.

In one embodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent197 performs monitoring and performance measurement of a delivery ofapplication and/or data from a server to a client via one or moreappliances, such as appliance 200 and/or appliance 205. In someembodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197monitors and measures performance of delivery of a virtualizedapplication. In other embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/ormonitoring agent 197 monitors and measures performance of delivery of astreaming application. In another embodiment, the monitoring service 198and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors and measures performance ofdelivery of a desktop application to a client and/or the execution ofthe desktop application on the client. In another embodiment, themonitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors and measuresperformance of a client/server application.

In one embodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent197 is designed and constructed to provide application performancemanagement for the application delivery system 190. For example, themonitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197 may monitor, measureand manage the performance of the delivery of applications via theCitrix Presentation Server. In this example, the monitoring service 198and/or monitoring agent 197 monitors individual ICA sessions. Themonitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197 may measure the totaland per session system resource usage, as well as application andnetworking performance. The monitoring service 198 and/or monitoringagent 197 may identify the active servers for a given user and/or usersession. In some embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/ormonitoring agent 197 monitors back-end connections between theapplication delivery system 190 and an application and/or databaseserver. The monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197 maymeasure network latency, delay and volume per user-session or ICAsession.

In some embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent197 measures and monitors memory usage for the application deliverysystem 190, such as total memory usage, per user session and/or perprocess. In other embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/ormonitoring agent 197 measures and monitors CPU usage the applicationdelivery system 190, such as total CPU usage, per user session and/orper process. In another embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/ormonitoring agent 197 measures and monitors the time required to log-into an application, a server, or the application delivery system, such asCitrix Presentation Server. In one embodiment, the monitoring service198 and/or monitoring agent 197 measures and monitors the duration auser is logged into an application, a server, or the applicationdelivery system 190. In some embodiments, the monitoring service 198and/or monitoring agent 197 measures and monitors active and inactivesession counts for an application, server or application delivery systemsession. In yet another embodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/ormonitoring agent 197 measures and monitors user session latency.

In yet further embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoringagent 197 measures and monitors measures and monitors any type and formof server metrics. In one embodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/ormonitoring agent 197 measures and monitors metrics related to systemmemory, CPU usage, and disk storage. In another embodiment, themonitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197 measures and monitorsmetrics related to page faults, such as page faults per second. In otherembodiments, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197measures and monitors round-trip time metrics. In yet anotherembodiment, the monitoring service 198 and/or monitoring agent 197measures and monitors metrics related to application crashes, errorsand/or hangs.

In some embodiments, the monitoring service 198 and monitoring agent 198includes any of the product embodiments referred to as EdgeSightmanufactured by Citrix Systems, Inc. of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. In anotherembodiment, the performance monitoring service 198 and/or monitoringagent 198 includes any portion of the product embodiments referred to asthe TrueView product suite manufactured by the Symphoniq Corporation ofPalo Alto, Calif. In one embodiment, the performance monitoring service198 and/or monitoring agent 198 includes any portion of the productembodiments referred to as the TeaLeaf CX product suite manufactured bythe TeaLeaf Technology Inc. of San Francisco, Calif. In otherembodiments, the performance monitoring service 198 and/or monitoringagent 198 includes any portion of the business service managementproducts, such as the BMC Performance Manager and Patrol products,manufactured by BMC Software, Inc. of Houston, Tex.

The client 102, server 106, and appliance 200 may be deployed as and/orexecuted on any type and form of computing device, such as a computer,network device or appliance capable of communicating on any type andform of network and performing the operations described herein. FIGS. 1Eand 1F depict block diagrams of a computing device 100 useful forpracticing an embodiment of the client 102, server 106 or appliance 200.As shown in FIGS. 1E and 1F, each computing device 100 includes acentral processing unit 101, and a main memory unit 122. As shown inFIG. 1E, a computing device 100 may include a visual display device 124,a keyboard 126 and/or a pointing device 127, such as a mouse. Eachcomputing device 100 may also include additional optional elements, suchas one or more input/output devices 130 a-130 b (generally referred tousing reference numeral 130), and a cache memory 140 in communicationwith the central processing unit 101.

The central processing unit 101 is any logic circuitry that responds toand processes instructions fetched from the main memory unit 122. Inmany embodiments, the central processing unit is provided by amicroprocessor unit, such as: those manufactured by Intel Corporation ofMountain View, Calif.; those manufactured by Motorola Corporation ofSchaumburg, Ill.; those manufactured by Transmeta Corporation of SantaClara, Calif.; the RS/6000 processor, those manufactured byInternational Business Machines of White Plains, N.Y.; or thosemanufactured by Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, Calif. Thecomputing device 100 may be based on any of these processors, or anyother processor capable of operating as described herein.

Main memory unit 122 may be one or more memory chips capable of storingdata and allowing any storage location to be directly accessed by themicroprocessor 101, such as Static random access memory (SRAM), BurstSRAM or SynchBurst SRAM (BSRAM), Dynamic random access memory (DRAM),Fast Page Mode DRAM (FPM DRAM), Enhanced DRAM (EDRAM), Extended DataOutput RAM (EDO RAM), Extended Data Output DRAM (EDO DRAM), BurstExtended Data Output DRAM (BEDO DRAM), Enhanced DRAM (EDRAM),synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), JEDEC SRAM, PC100 SDRAM, Double Data RateSDRAM (DDR SDRAM), Enhanced SDRAM (ESDRAM), SyncLink DRAM (SLDRAM),Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM), or Ferroelectric RAM (FRAM). The mainmemory 122 may be based on any of the above described memory chips, orany other available memory chips capable of operating as describedherein. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1E, the processor 101communicates with main memory 122 via a system bus 150 (described inmore detail below). FIG. 1F depicts an embodiment of a computing device100 in which the processor communicates directly with main memory 122via a memory port 103. For example, in FIG. 1F the main memory 122 maybe DRDRAM.

FIG. 1F depicts an embodiment in which the main processor 101communicates directly with cache memory 140 via a secondary bus,sometimes referred to as a backside bus. In other embodiments, the mainprocessor 101 communicates with cache memory 140 using the system bus150. Cache memory 140 typically has a faster response time than mainmemory 122 and is typically provided by SRAM, BSRAM, or EDRAM. In theembodiment shown in FIG. 1F, the processor 101 communicates with variousI/O devices 130 via a local system bus 150. Various busses may be usedto connect the central processing unit 101 to any of the I/O devices130, including a VESA VL bus, an ISA bus, an EISA bus, a MicroChannelArchitecture (MCA) bus, a PCI bus, a PCI-X bus, a PCI-Express bus, or aNuBus. For embodiments in which the I/O device is a video display 124,the processor 101 may use an Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) to communicatewith the display 124. FIG. 1F depicts an embodiment of a computer 100 inwhich the main processor 101 communicates directly with I/O device 130 bvia HyperTransport, Rapid I/O, or InfiniBand. FIG. 1F also depicts anembodiment in which local busses and direct communication are mixed: theprocessor 101 communicates with I/O device 130 b using a localinterconnect bus while communicating with I/O device 130 a directly.

The computing device 100 may support any suitable installation device116, such as a floppy disk drive for receiving floppy disks such as3.5-inch, 5.25-inch disks or ZIP disks, a CD-ROM drive, a CD-R/RW drive,a DVD-ROM drive, tape drives of various formats, USB device, hard-driveor any other device suitable for installing software and programs suchas any client agent 120, or portion thereof. The computing device 100may further comprise a storage device 128, such as one or more hard diskdrives or redundant arrays of independent disks, for storing anoperating system and other related software, and for storing applicationsoftware programs such as any program related to the client agent 120.Optionally, any of the installation devices 116 could also be used asthe storage device 128. Additionally, the operating system and thesoftware can be run from a bootable medium, for example, a bootable CD,such as KNOPPIX®, a bootable CD for GNU/Linux that is available as aGNU/Linux distribution from knoppix.net.

Furthermore, the computing device 100 may include a network interface118 to interface to a Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN)or the Internet through a variety of connections including, but notlimited to, standard telephone lines, LAN or WAN links (e.g., 802.11,T1, T3, 56 kb, X.25), broadband connections (e.g., ISDN, Frame Relay,ATM), wireless connections, or some combination of any or all of theabove. The network interface 118 may comprise a built-in networkadapter, network interface card, PCMCIA network card, card bus networkadapter, wireless network adapter, USB network adapter, modem or anyother device suitable for interfacing the computing device 100 to anytype of network capable of communication and performing the operationsdescribed herein.

A wide variety of I/O devices 130 a-130 n may be present in thecomputing device 100. Input devices include keyboards, mice, trackpads,trackballs, microphones, and drawing tablets. Output devices includevideo displays, speakers, inkjet printers, laser printers, anddye-sublimation printers. The I/O devices 130 may be controlled by anI/O controller 123 as shown in FIG. 1E. The I/O controller may controlone or more I/O devices such as a keyboard 126 and a pointing device127, e.g., a mouse or optical pen. Furthermore, an I/O device may alsoprovide storage 128 and/or an installation medium 116 for the computingdevice 100. In still other embodiments, the computing device 100 mayprovide USB connections to receive handheld USB storage devices such asthe USB Flash Drive line of devices manufactured by Twintech Industry,Inc. of Los Alamitos, Calif.

In some embodiments, the computing device 100 may comprise or beconnected to multiple display devices 124 a-124 n, which each may be ofthe same or different type and/or form. As such, any of the I/O devices130 a-130 n and/or the I/O controller 123 may comprise any type and/orform of suitable hardware, software, or combination of hardware andsoftware to support, enable or provide for the connection and use ofmultiple display devices 124 a-124 n by the computing device 100. Forexample, the computing device 100 may include any type and/or form ofvideo adapter, video card, driver, and/or library to interface,communicate, connect or otherwise use the display devices 124 a-124 n.In one embodiment, a video adapter may comprise multiple connectors tointerface to multiple display devices 124 a-124 n. In other embodiments,the computing device 100 may include multiple video adapters, with eachvideo adapter connected to one or more of the display devices 124 a-124n. In some embodiments, any portion of the operating system of thecomputing device 100 may be configured for using multiple displays 124a-124 n. In other embodiments, one or more of the display devices 124a-124 n may be provided by one or more other computing devices, such ascomputing devices 100 a and 100 b connected to the computing device 100,for example, via a network. These embodiments may include any type ofsoftware designed and constructed to use another computer's displaydevice as a second display device 124 a for the computing device 100.One ordinarily skilled in the art will recognize and appreciate thevarious ways and embodiments that a computing device 100 may beconfigured to have multiple display devices 124 a-124 n.

In further embodiments, an I/O device 130 may be a bridge 170 betweenthe system bus 150 and an external communication bus, such as a USB bus,an Apple Desktop Bus, an RS-232 serial connection, a SCSI bus, aFireWire bus, a FireWire 800 bus, an Ethernet bus, an AppleTalk bus, aGigabit Ethernet bus, an Asynchronous Transfer Mode bus, a HIPPI bus, aSuper HIPPI bus, a SerialPlus bus, a SCI/LAMP bus, a FibreChannel bus,or a Serial Attached small computer system interface bus.

A computing device 100 of the sort depicted in FIGS. 1E and 1F typicallyoperate under the control of operating systems, which control schedulingof tasks and access to system resources. The computing device 100 can berunning any operating system such as any of the versions of theMicrosoft® Windows operating systems, the different releases of the Unixand Linux operating systems, any version of the Mac OS® for Macintoshcomputers, any embedded operating system, any real-time operatingsystem, any open source operating system, any proprietary operatingsystem, any operating systems for mobile computing devices, or any otheroperating system capable of running on the computing device andperforming the operations described herein. Typical operating systemsinclude: WINDOWS 3.x, WINDOWS 95, WINDOWS 98, WINDOWS 2000, WINDOWS NT3.51, WINDOWS NT 4.0, WINDOWS CE, and WINDOWS XP, all of which aremanufactured by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.; MacOS,manufactured by Apple Computer of Cupertino, Calif.; OS/2, manufacturedby International Business Machines of Armonk, N.Y.; and Linux, afreely-available operating system distributed by Caldera Corp. of SaltLake City, Utah, or any type and/or form of a Unix operating system,among others.

In other embodiments, the computing device 100 may have differentprocessors, operating systems, and input devices consistent with thedevice. For example, in one embodiment the computer 100 is a Treo 180,270, 1060, 600 or 650 smart phone manufactured by Palm, Inc. In thisembodiment, the Treo smart phone is operated under the control of thePalmOS operating system and includes a stylus input device as well as afive-way navigator device. Moreover, the computing device 100 can be anyworkstation, desktop computer, laptop or notebook computer, server,handheld computer, mobile telephone, any other computer, or other formof computing or telecommunications device that is capable ofcommunication and that has sufficient processor power and memorycapacity to perform the operations described herein.

As shown in FIG. 1G, the computing device 100 may comprise multipleprocessors and may provide functionality for simultaneous execution ofinstructions or for simultaneous execution of one instruction on morethan one piece of data. In some embodiments, the computing device 100may comprise a parallel processor with one or more cores. In one ofthese embodiments, the computing device 100 is a shared memory paralleldevice, with multiple processors and/or multiple processor cores,accessing all available memory as a single global address space. Inanother of these embodiments, the computing device 100 is a distributedmemory parallel device with multiple processors each accessing localmemory only. In still another of these embodiments, the computing device100 has both some memory which is shared and some memory which can onlybe accessed by particular processors or subsets of processors. In stilleven another of these embodiments, the computing device 100, such as amulti-core microprocessor, combines two or more independent processorsinto a single package, often a single integrated circuit (IC). In yetanother of these embodiments, the computing device 100 includes a chiphaving a CELL BROADBAND ENGINE architecture and including a Powerprocessor element and a plurality of synergistic processing elements,the Power processor element and the plurality of synergistic processingelements linked together by an internal high speed bus, which may bereferred to as an element interconnect bus.

In some embodiments, the processors provide functionality for executionof a single instruction simultaneously on multiple pieces of data(SIMD). In other embodiments, the processors provide functionality forexecution of multiple instructions simultaneously on multiple pieces ofdata (MIMD). In still other embodiments, the processor may use anycombination of SIMD and MIMD cores in a single device.

In some embodiments, the computing device 100 may comprise a graphicsprocessing unit. In one of these embodiments, depicted in FIG. 1H, thecomputing device 100 includes at least one central processing unit 101and at least one graphics processing unit. In another of theseembodiments, the computing device 100 includes at least one parallelprocessing unit and at least one graphics processing unit. In stillanother of these embodiments, the computing device 100 includes aplurality of processing units of any type, one of the plurality ofprocessing units comprising a graphics processing unit.

In some embodiments, a first computing device 100 a executes anapplication on behalf of a user of a client computing device 100 b. Inother embodiments, a computing device 100 a executes a virtual machine,which provides an execution session within which applications execute onbehalf of a user or a client computing devices 100 b. In one of theseembodiments, the execution session is a hosted desktop session. Inanother of these embodiments, the computing device 100 executes aterminal services session. The terminal services session may provide ahosted desktop environment. In still another of these embodiments, theexecution session provides access to a computing environment, which maycomprise one or more of: an application, a plurality of applications, adesktop application, and a desktop session in which one or moreapplications may execute.

B. Appliance Architecture

FIG. 2A illustrates an example embodiment of the appliance 200. Thearchitecture of the appliance 200 in FIG. 2A is provided by way ofillustration only and is not intended to be limiting. As shown in FIG.2, appliance 200 comprises a hardware layer 206 and a software layerdivided into a user space 202 and a kernel space 204.

Hardware layer 206 provides the hardware elements upon which programsand services within kernel space 204 and user space 202 are executed.Hardware layer 206 also provides the structures and elements which allowprograms and services within kernel space 204 and user space 202 tocommunicate data both internally and externally with respect toappliance 200. As shown in FIG. 2, the hardware layer 206 includes aprocessing unit 262 for executing software programs and services, amemory 264 for storing software and data, network ports 266 fortransmitting and receiving data over a network, and an encryptionprocessor 260 for performing functions related to Secure Sockets Layerprocessing of data transmitted and received over the network. In someembodiments, the central processing unit 262 may perform the functionsof the encryption processor 260 in a single processor. Additionally, thehardware layer 206 may comprise multiple processors for each of theprocessing unit 262 and the encryption processor 260. The processor 262may include any of the processors 101 described above in connection withFIGS. 1E and 1F. For example, in one embodiment, the appliance 200comprises a first processor 262 and a second processor 262′. In otherembodiments, the processor 262 or 262′ comprises a multi-core processor.

Although the hardware layer 206 of appliance 200 is generallyillustrated with an encryption processor 260, processor 260 may be aprocessor for performing functions related to any encryption protocol,such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS)protocol. In some embodiments, the processor 260 may be a generalpurpose processor (GPP), and in further embodiments, may have executableinstructions for performing processing of any security related protocol.

Although the hardware layer 206 of appliance 200 is illustrated withcertain elements in FIG. 2, the hardware portions or components ofappliance 200 may comprise any type and form of elements, hardware orsoftware, of a computing device, such as the computing device 100illustrated and discussed herein in conjunction with FIGS. 1E and 1F. Insome embodiments, the appliance 200 may comprise a server, gateway,router, switch, bridge or other type of computing or network device, andhave any hardware and/or software elements associated therewith.

The operating system of appliance 200 allocates, manages, or otherwisesegregates the available system memory into kernel space 204 and userspace 204. In example software architecture 200, the operating systemmay be any type and/or form of Unix operating system although theinvention is not so limited. As such, the appliance 200 can be runningany operating system such as any of the versions of the Microsoft®Windows operating systems, the different releases of the Unix and Linuxoperating systems, any version of the Mac OS® for Macintosh computers,any embedded operating system, any network operating system, anyreal-time operating system, any open source operating system, anyproprietary operating system, any operating systems for mobile computingdevices or network devices, or any other operating system capable ofrunning on the appliance 200 and performing the operations describedherein.

The kernel space 204 is reserved for running the kernel 230, includingany device drivers, kernel extensions or other kernel related software.As known to those skilled in the art, the kernel 230 is the core of theoperating system, and provides access, control, and management ofresources and hardware-related elements of the application 104. Inaccordance with an embodiment of the appliance 200, the kernel space 204also includes a number of network services or processes working inconjunction with a cache manager 232, sometimes also referred to as theintegrated cache, the benefits of which are described in detail furtherherein. Additionally, the embodiment of the kernel 230 will depend onthe embodiment of the operating system installed, configured, orotherwise used by the device 200.

In one embodiment, the device 200 comprises one network stack 267, suchas a TCP/IP based stack, for communicating with the client 102 and/orthe server 106. In one embodiment, the network stack 267 is used tocommunicate with a first network, such as network 108, and a secondnetwork 110. In some embodiments, the device 200 terminates a firsttransport layer connection, such as a TCP connection of a client 102,and establishes a second transport layer connection to a server 106 foruse by the client 102, e.g., the second transport layer connection isterminated at the appliance 200 and the server 106. The first and secondtransport layer connections may be established via a single networkstack 267. In other embodiments, the device 200 may comprise multiplenetwork stacks, for example 267 and 267′, and the first transport layerconnection may be established or terminated at one network stack 267,and the second transport layer connection on the second network stack267′. For example, one network stack may be for receiving andtransmitting network packet on a first network, and another networkstack for receiving and transmitting network packets on a secondnetwork. In one embodiment, the network stack 267 comprises a buffer 243for queuing one or more network packets for transmission by theappliance 200.

As shown in FIG. 2, the kernel space 204 includes the cache manager 232,a high-speed layer 2-7 integrated packet engine 240, an encryptionengine 234, a policy engine 236 and multi-protocol compression logic238. Running these components or processes 232, 240, 234, 236 and 238 inkernel space 204 or kernel mode instead of the user space 202 improvesthe performance of each of these components, alone and in combination.Kernel operation means that these components or processes 232, 240, 234,236 and 238 run in the core address space of the operating system of thedevice 200. For example, running the encryption engine 234 in kernelmode improves encryption performance by moving encryption and decryptionoperations to the kernel, thereby reducing the number of transitionsbetween the memory space or a kernel thread in kernel mode and thememory space or a thread in user mode. For example, data obtained inkernel mode may not need to be passed or copied to a process or threadrunning in user mode, such as from a kernel level data structure to auser level data structure. In another aspect, the number of contextswitches between kernel mode and user mode are also reduced.Additionally, synchronization of and communications between any of thecomponents or processes 232, 240, 235, 236 and 238 can be performed moreefficiently in the kernel space 204.

In some embodiments, any portion of the components 232, 240, 234, 236and 238 may run or operate in the kernel space 204, while other portionsof these components 232, 240, 234, 236 and 238 may run or operate inuser space 202. In one embodiment, the appliance 200 uses a kernel-leveldata structure providing access to any portion of one or more networkpackets, for example, a network packet comprising a request from aclient 102 or a response from a server 106. In some embodiments, thekernel-level data structure may be obtained by the packet engine 240 viaa transport layer driver interface or filter to the network stack 267.The kernel-level data structure may comprise any interface and/or dataaccessible via the kernel space 204 related to the network stack 267,network traffic or packets received or transmitted by the network stack267. In other embodiments, the kernel-level data structure may be usedby any of the components or processes 232, 240, 234, 236 and 238 toperform the desired operation of the component or process. In oneembodiment, a component 232, 240, 234, 236 and 238 is running in kernelmode 204 when using the kernel-level data structure, while in anotherembodiment, the component 232, 240, 234, 236 and 238 is running in usermode when using the kernel-level data structure. In some embodiments,the kernel-level data structure may be copied or passed to a secondkernel-level data structure, or any desired user-level data structure.

The cache manager 232 may comprise software, hardware or any combinationof software and hardware to provide cache access, control and managementof any type and form of content, such as objects or dynamicallygenerated objects served by the originating servers 106. The data,objects or content processed and stored by the cache manager 232 maycomprise data in any format, such as a markup language, or communicatedvia any protocol. In some embodiments, the cache manager 232 duplicatesoriginal data stored elsewhere or data previously computed, generated ortransmitted, in which the original data may require longer access timeto fetch, compute or otherwise obtain relative to reading a cache memoryelement. Once the data is stored in the cache memory element, future usecan be made by accessing the cached copy rather than refetching orrecomputing the original data, thereby reducing the access time. In someembodiments, the cache memory element may comprise a data object inmemory 264 of device 200. In other embodiments, the cache memory elementmay comprise memory having a faster access time than memory 264. Inanother embodiment, the cache memory element may comprise any type andform of storage element of the device 200, such as a portion of a harddisk. In some embodiments, the processing unit 262 may provide cachememory for use by the cache manager 232. In yet further embodiments, thecache manager 232 may use any portion and combination of memory,storage, or the processing unit for caching data, objects, and othercontent.

Furthermore, the cache manager 232 includes any logic, functions, rules,or operations to perform any embodiments of the techniques of theappliance 200 described herein. For example, the cache manager 232includes logic or functionality to invalidate objects based on theexpiration of an invalidation time period or upon receipt of aninvalidation command from a client 102 or server 106. In someembodiments, the cache manager 232 may operate as a program, service,process or task executing in the kernel space 204, and in otherembodiments, in the user space 202. In one embodiment, a first portionof the cache manager 232 executes in the user space 202 while a secondportion executes in the kernel space 204. In some embodiments, the cachemanager 232 can comprise any type of general purpose processor (GPP), orany other type of integrated circuit, such as a Field Programmable GateArray (FPGA), Programmable Logic Device (PLD), or Application SpecificIntegrated Circuit (ASIC).

The policy engine 236 may include, for example, an intelligentstatistical engine or other programmable application(s). In oneembodiment, the policy engine 236 provides a configuration mechanism toallow a user to identify, specify, define or configure a caching policy.Policy engine 236, in some embodiments, also has access to memory tosupport data structures such as lookup tables or hash tables to enableuser-selected caching policy decisions. In other embodiments, the policyengine 236 may comprise any logic, rules, functions or operations todetermine and provide access, control and management of objects, data orcontent being cached by the appliance 200 in addition to access, controland management of security, network traffic, network access, compressionor any other function or operation performed by the appliance 200.Further examples of specific caching policies are further describedherein.

The encryption engine 234 comprises any logic, business rules, functionsor operations for handling the processing of any security relatedprotocol, such as SSL or TLS, or any function related thereto. Forexample, the encryption engine 234 encrypts and decrypts networkpackets, or any portion thereof, communicated via the appliance 200. Theencryption engine 234 may also setup or establish SSL or TLS connectionson behalf of the client 102 a-102 n, server 106 a-106 n, or appliance200. As such, the encryption engine 234 provides offloading andacceleration of SSL processing. In one embodiment, the encryption engine234 uses a tunneling protocol to provide a virtual private networkbetween a client 102 a-102 n and a server 106 a-106 n. In someembodiments, the encryption engine 234 is in communication with theEncryption processor 260. In other embodiments, the encryption engine234 comprises executable instructions running on the Encryptionprocessor 260.

The multi-protocol compression engine 238 comprises any logic, businessrules, function or operations for compressing one or more protocols of anetwork packet, such as any of the protocols used by the network stack267 of the device 200. In one embodiment, multi-protocol compressionengine 238 compresses bi-directionally between clients 102 a-102 n andservers 106 a-106 n any TCP/IP based protocol, including MessagingApplication Programming Interface (MAPI) (email), File Transfer Protocol(FTP), HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Common Internet File System(CIFS) protocol (file transfer), Independent Computing Architecture(ICA) protocol, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), Wireless ApplicationProtocol (WAP), Mobile IP protocol, and Voice Over IP (VoIP) protocol.In other embodiments, multi-protocol compression engine 238 providescompression of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) based protocols and insome embodiments, provides compression of any markup languages, such asthe Extensible Markup Language (XML). In one embodiment, themulti-protocol compression engine 238 provides compression of anyhigh-performance protocol, such as any protocol designed for appliance200 to appliance 200 communications. In another embodiment, themulti-protocol compression engine 238 compresses any payload of or anycommunication using a modified transport control protocol, such asTransaction TCP (T/TCP), TCP with selection acknowledgements (TCP-SACK),TCP with large windows (TCP-LW), a congestion prediction protocol suchas the TCP-Vegas protocol, and a TCP spoofing protocol.

As such, the multi-protocol compression engine 238 acceleratesperformance for users accessing applications via desktop clients, e.g.,Microsoft Outlook and non-Web thin clients, such as any client launchedby popular enterprise applications like Oracle, SAP and Siebel, and evenmobile clients, such as the Pocket PC. In some embodiments, themulti-protocol compression engine 238 by executing in the kernel mode204 and integrating with packet processing engine 240 accessing thenetwork stack 267 is able to compress any of the protocols carried bythe TCP/IP protocol, such as any application layer protocol.

High speed layer 2-7 integrated packet engine 240, also generallyreferred to as a packet processing engine or packet engine, isresponsible for managing the kernel-level processing of packets receivedand transmitted by appliance 200 via network ports 266. The high speedlayer 2-7 integrated packet engine 240 may comprise a buffer for queuingone or more network packets during processing, such as for receipt of anetwork packet or transmission of a network packet. Additionally, thehigh speed layer 2-7 integrated packet engine 240 is in communicationwith one or more network stacks 267 to send and receive network packetsvia network ports 266. The high speed layer 2-7 integrated packet engine240 works in conjunction with encryption engine 234, cache manager 232,policy engine 236 and multi-protocol compression logic 238. Inparticular, encryption engine 234 is configured to perform SSLprocessing of packets, policy engine 236 is configured to performfunctions related to traffic management such as request-level contentswitching and request-level cache redirection, and multi-protocolcompression logic 238 is configured to perform functions related tocompression and decompression of data.

The high speed layer 2-7 integrated packet engine 240 includes a packetprocessing timer 242. In one embodiment, the packet processing timer 242provides one or more time intervals to trigger the processing ofincoming, i.e., received, or outgoing, i.e., transmitted, networkpackets. In some embodiments, the high speed layer 2-7 integrated packetengine 240 processes network packets responsive to the timer 242. Thepacket processing timer 242 provides any type and form of signal to thepacket engine 240 to notify, trigger, or communicate a time relatedevent, interval or occurrence. In many embodiments, the packetprocessing timer 242 operates in the order of milliseconds, such as forexample 100 ms, 50 ms or 25 ms. For example, in some embodiments, thepacket processing timer 242 provides time intervals or otherwise causesa network packet to be processed by the high speed layer 2-7 integratedpacket engine 240 at a 10 ms time interval, while in other embodiments,at a 5 ms time interval, and still yet in further embodiments, as shortas a 3, 2, or 1 ms time interval. The high speed layer 2-7 integratedpacket engine 240 may be interfaced, integrated or in communication withthe encryption engine 234, cache manager 232, policy engine 236 andmulti-protocol compression engine 238 during operation. As such, any ofthe logic, functions, or operations of the encryption engine 234, cachemanager 232, policy engine 236 and multi-protocol compression logic 238may be performed responsive to the packet processing timer 242 and/orthe packet engine 240. Therefore, any of the logic, functions, oroperations of the encryption engine 234, cache manager 232, policyengine 236 and multi-protocol compression logic 238 may be performed atthe granularity of time intervals provided via the packet processingtimer 242, for example, at a time interval of less than or equal to 10ms. For example, in one embodiment, the cache manager 232 may performinvalidation of any cached objects responsive to the high speed layer2-7 integrated packet engine 240 and/or the packet processing timer 242.In another embodiment, the expiry or invalidation time of a cachedobject can be set to the same order of granularity as the time intervalof the packet processing timer 242, such as at every 10 ms.

In contrast to kernel space 204, user space 202 is the memory area orportion of the operating system used by user mode applications orprograms otherwise running in user mode. A user mode application may notaccess kernel space 204 directly and uses service calls in order toaccess kernel services. As shown in FIG. 2, user space 202 of appliance200 includes a graphical user interface (GUI) 210, a command lineinterface (CLI) 212, shell services 214, health monitoring program 216,and daemon services 218. GUI 210 and CLI 212 provide a means by which asystem administrator or other user can interact with and control theoperation of appliance 200, such as via the operating system of theappliance 200. The GUI 210 or CLI 212 can comprise code running in userspace 202 or kernel space 204. The GUI 210 may be any type and form ofgraphical user interface and may be presented via text, graphical orotherwise, by any type of program or application, such as a browser. TheCLI 212 may be any type and form of command line or text-basedinterface, such as a command line provided by the operating system. Forexample, the CLI 212 may comprise a shell, which is a tool to enableusers to interact with the operating system. In some embodiments, theCLI 212 may be provided via a bash, csh, tcsh, or ksh type shell. Theshell services 214 comprises the programs, services, tasks, processes orexecutable instructions to support interaction with the appliance 200 oroperating system by a user via the GUI 210 and/or CLI 212.

Health monitoring program 216 is used to monitor, check, report andensure that network systems are functioning properly and that users arereceiving requested content over a network. Health monitoring program216 comprises one or more programs, services, tasks, processes orexecutable instructions to provide logic, rules, functions or operationsfor monitoring any activity of the appliance 200. In some embodiments,the health monitoring program 216 intercepts and inspects any networktraffic passed via the appliance 200. In other embodiments, the healthmonitoring program 216 interfaces by any suitable means and/ormechanisms with one or more of the following: the encryption engine 234,cache manager 232, policy engine 236, multi-protocol compression logic238, packet engine 240, daemon services 218, and shell services 214. Assuch, the health monitoring program 216 may call any applicationprogramming interface (API) to determine a state, status, or health ofany portion of the appliance 200. For example, the health monitoringprogram 216 may ping or send a status inquiry on a periodic basis tocheck if a program, process, service or task is active and currentlyrunning. In another example, the health monitoring program 216 may checkany status, error or history logs provided by any program, process,service or task to determine any condition, status or error with anyportion of the appliance 200.

Daemon services 218 are programs that run continuously or in thebackground and handle periodic service requests received by appliance200. In some embodiments, a daemon service may forward the requests toother programs or processes, such as another daemon service 218 asappropriate. As known to those skilled in the art, a daemon service 218may run unattended to perform continuous or periodic system widefunctions, such as network control, or to perform any desired task. Insome embodiments, one or more daemon services 218 run in the user space202, while in other embodiments, one or more daemon services 218 run inthe kernel space.

Referring now to FIG. 2B, another embodiment of the appliance 200 isdepicted. In brief overview, the appliance 200 provides one or more ofthe following services, functionality or operations: SSL VPNconnectivity 280, switching/load balancing 284, Domain Name Serviceresolution 286, acceleration 288 and an application firewall 290 forcommunications between one or more clients 102 and one or more servers106. Each of the servers 106 may provide one or more network relatedservices 270 a-270 n (referred to as services 270). For example, aserver 106 may provide an http service 270. The appliance 200 comprisesone or more virtual servers or virtual internet protocol servers,referred to as a vServer, VIP server, or just VIP 275 a-275 n (alsoreferred herein as vServer 275). The vServer 275 receives, intercepts orotherwise processes communications between a client 102 and a server 106in accordance with the configuration and operations of the appliance200.

The vServer 275 may comprise software, hardware or any combination ofsoftware and hardware. The vServer 275 may comprise any type and form ofprogram, service, task, process or executable instructions operating inuser mode 202, kernel mode 204 or any combination thereof in theappliance 200. The vServer 275 includes any logic, functions, rules, oroperations to perform any embodiments of the techniques describedherein, such as SSL VPN 280, switching/load balancing 284, Domain NameService resolution 286, acceleration 288 and an application firewall290. In some embodiments, the vServer 275 establishes a connection to aservice 270 of a server 106. The service 275 may comprise any program,application, process, task or set of executable instructions capable ofconnecting to and communicating to the appliance 200, client 102 orvServer 275. For example, the service 275 may comprise a web server,http server, ftp, email or database server. In some embodiments, theservice 270 is a daemon process or network driver for listening,receiving and/or sending communications for an application, such asemail, database or an enterprise application. In some embodiments, theservice 270 may communicate on a specific IP address, or IP address andport.

In some embodiments, the vServer 275 applies one or more policies of thepolicy engine 236 to network communications between the client 102 andserver 106. In one embodiment, the policies are associated with avServer 275. In another embodiment, the policies are based on a user, ora group of users. In yet another embodiment, a policy is global andapplies to one or more vServers 275 a-275 n, and any user or group ofusers communicating via the appliance 200. In some embodiments, thepolicies of the policy engine have conditions upon which the policy isapplied based on any content of the communication, such as internetprotocol address, port, protocol type, header or fields in a packet, orthe context of the communication, such as user, group of the user,vServer 275, transport layer connection, and/or identification orattributes of the client 102 or server 106.

In other embodiments, the appliance 200 communicates or interfaces withthe policy engine 236 to determine authentication and/or authorizationof a remote user or a remote client 102 to access the computingenvironment 15, application, and/or data file from a server 106. Inanother embodiment, the appliance 200 communicates or interfaces withthe policy engine 236 to determine authentication and/or authorizationof a remote user or a remote client 102 to have the application deliverysystem 190 deliver one or more of the computing environment 15,application, and/or data file. In yet another embodiment, the appliance200 establishes a VPN or SSL VPN connection based on the policy engine's236 authentication and/or authorization of a remote user or a remoteclient 102 In one embodiment, the appliance 200 controls the flow ofnetwork traffic and communication sessions based on policies of thepolicy engine 236. For example, the appliance 200 may control the accessto a computing environment 15, application or data file based on thepolicy engine 236.

In some embodiments, the vServer 275 establishes a transport layerconnection, such as a TCP or UDP connection with a client 102 via theclient agent 120. In one embodiment, the vServer 275 listens for andreceives communications from the client 102. In other embodiments, thevServer 275 establishes a transport layer connection, such as a TCP orUDP connection with a client server 106. In one embodiment, the vServer275 establishes the transport layer connection to an internet protocoladdress and port of a server 270 running on the server 106. In anotherembodiment, the vServer 275 associates a first transport layerconnection to a client 102 with a second transport layer connection tothe server 106. In some embodiments, a vServer 275 establishes a pool oftransport layer connections to a server 106 and multiplexes clientrequests via the pooled transport layer connections.

In some embodiments, the appliance 200 provides a SSL VPN connection 280between a client 102 and a server 106. For example, a client 102 on afirst network 102 requests to establish a connection to a server 106 ona second network 104′. In some embodiments, the second network 104′ isnot routable from the first network 104. In other embodiments, theclient 102 is on a public network 104 and the server 106 is on a privatenetwork 104′, such as a corporate network. In one embodiment, the clientagent 120 intercepts communications of the client 102 on the firstnetwork 104, encrypts the communications, and transmits thecommunications via a first transport layer connection to the appliance200. The appliance 200 associates the first transport layer connectionon the first network 104 to a second transport layer connection to theserver 106 on the second network 104. The appliance 200 receives theintercepted communication from the client agent 102, decrypts thecommunications, and transmits the communication to the server 106 on thesecond network 104 via the second transport layer connection. The secondtransport layer connection may be a pooled transport layer connection.As such, the appliance 200 provides an end-to-end secure transport layerconnection for the client 102 between the two networks 104, 104′.

In one embodiment, the appliance 200 hosts an intranet internet protocolor IntranetIP 282 address of the client 102 on the virtual privatenetwork 104. The client 102 has a local network identifier, such as aninternet protocol (IP) address and/or host name on the first network104. When connected to the second network 104′ via the appliance 200,the appliance 200 establishes, assigns or otherwise provides anIntranetIP address 282, which is a network identifier, such as IPaddress and/or host name, for the client 102 on the second network 104′.The appliance 200 listens for and receives on the second or privatenetwork 104′ for any communications directed towards the client 102using the client's established IntranetIP 282. In one embodiment, theappliance 200 acts as or on behalf of the client 102 on the secondprivate network 104. For example, in another embodiment, a vServer 275listens for and responds to communications to the IntranetIP 282 of theclient 102. In some embodiments, if a computing device 100 on the secondnetwork 104′ transmits a request, the appliance 200 processes therequest as if it were the client 102. For example, the appliance 200 mayrespond to a ping to the client's IntranetIP 282. In another example,the appliance may establish a connection, such as a TCP or UDPconnection, with computing device 100 on the second network 104requesting a connection with the client's IntranetIP 282.

In some embodiments, the appliance 200 provides one or more of thefollowing acceleration techniques 288 to communications between theclient 102 and server 106: 1) compression; 2) decompression; 3)Transmission Control Protocol pooling; 4) Transmission Control Protocolmultiplexing; 5) Transmission Control Protocol buffering; and 6)caching.

In one embodiment, the appliance 200 relieves servers 106 of much of theprocessing load caused by repeatedly opening and closing transportlayers connections to clients 102 by opening one or more transport layerconnections with each server 106 and maintaining these connections toallow repeated data accesses by clients via the Internet. This techniqueis referred to herein as “connection pooling”.

In some embodiments, in order to seamlessly splice communications from aclient 102 to a server 106 via a pooled transport layer connection, theappliance 200 translates or multiplexes communications by modifyingsequence number and acknowledgment numbers at the transport layerprotocol level. This is referred to as “connection multiplexing”. Insome embodiments, no application layer protocol interaction is required.For example, in the case of an in-bound packet (that is, a packetreceived from a client 102), the source network address of the packet ischanged to that of an output port of appliance 200, and the destinationnetwork address is changed to that of the intended server. In the caseof an outbound packet (that is, one received from a server 106), thesource network address is changed from that of the server 106 to that ofan output port of appliance 200 and the destination address is changedfrom that of appliance 200 to that of the requesting client 102. Thesequence numbers and acknowledgment numbers of the packet are alsotranslated to sequence numbers and acknowledgement numbers expected bythe client 102 on the appliance's 200 transport layer connection to theclient 102. In some embodiments, the packet checksum of the transportlayer protocol is recalculated to account for these translations.

In another embodiment, the appliance 200 provides switching orload-balancing functionality 284 for communications between the client102 and server 106. In some embodiments, the appliance 200 distributestraffic and directs client requests to a server 106 based on layer 4 orapplication-layer request data. In one embodiment, although the networklayer or layer 2 of the network packet identifies a destination server106, the appliance 200 determines the server 106 to distribute thenetwork packet by application information and data carried as payload ofthe transport layer packet. In one embodiment, the health monitoringprograms 216 of the appliance 200 monitor the health of servers todetermine the server 106 for which to distribute a client's request. Insome embodiments, if the appliance 200 detects a server 106 is notavailable or has a load over a predetermined threshold, the appliance200 can direct or distribute client requests to another server 106.

In some embodiments, the appliance 200 acts as a Domain Name Service(DNS) resolver or otherwise provides resolution of a DNS request fromclients 102. In some embodiments, the appliance intercepts a DNS requesttransmitted by the client 102. In one embodiment, the appliance 200responds to a client's DNS request with an IP address of or hosted bythe appliance 200. In this embodiment, the client 102 transmits networkcommunication for the domain name to the appliance 200. In anotherembodiment, the appliance 200 responds to a client's DNS request with anIP address of or hosted by a second appliance 200′. In some embodiments,the appliance 200 responds to a client's DNS request with an IP addressof a server 106 determined by the appliance 200.

In yet another embodiment, the appliance 200 provides applicationfirewall functionality 290 for communications between the client 102 andserver 106. In one embodiment, the policy engine 236 provides rules fordetecting and blocking illegitimate requests. In some embodiments, theapplication firewall 290 protects against denial of service (DoS)attacks. In other embodiments, the appliance inspects the content ofintercepted requests to identify and block application-based attacks. Insome embodiments, the rules/policy engine 236 comprises one or moreapplication firewall or security control policies for providingprotections against various classes and types of web or Internet basedvulnerabilities, such as one or more of the following: 1) bufferoverflow, 2) CGI-BIN parameter manipulation, 3) form/hidden fieldmanipulation, 4) forceful browsing, 5) cookie or session poisoning, 6)broken access control list (ACLs) or weak passwords, 7) cross-sitescripting (XSS), 8) command injection, 9) SQL injection, 10) errortriggering sensitive information leak, 11) insecure use of cryptography,12) server misconfiguration, 13) back doors and debug options, 14)website defacement, 15) platform or operating systems vulnerabilities,and 16) zero-day exploits. In an embodiment, the application firewall290 provides HTML form field protection in the form of inspecting oranalyzing the network communication for one or more of the following: 1)required fields are returned, 2) no added field allowed, 3) read-onlyand hidden field enforcement, 4) drop-down list and radio button fieldconformance, and 5) form-field max-length enforcement. In someembodiments, the application firewall 290 ensures cookies are notmodified. In other embodiments, the application firewall 290 protectsagainst forceful browsing by enforcing legal URLs.

In still yet other embodiments, the application firewall 290 protectsany confidential information contained in the network communication. Theapplication firewall 290 may inspect or analyze any networkcommunication in accordance with the rules or polices of the engine 236to identify any confidential information in any field of the networkpacket. In some embodiments, the application firewall 290 identifies inthe network communication one or more occurrences of a credit cardnumber, password, social security number, name, patient code, contactinformation, and age. The encoded portion of the network communicationmay comprise these occurrences or the confidential information. Based onthese occurrences, in one embodiment, the application firewall 290 maytake a policy action on the network communication, such as preventtransmission of the network communication. In another embodiment, theapplication firewall 290 may rewrite, remove or otherwise mask suchidentified occurrence or confidential information.

Still referring to FIG. 2B, the appliance 200 may include a performancemonitoring agent 197 as discussed above in conjunction with FIG. 1D. Inone embodiment, the appliance 200 receives the monitoring agent 197 fromthe monitoring service 198 or monitoring server 106 as depicted in FIG.1D. In some embodiments, the appliance 200 stores the monitoring agent197 in storage, such as disk, for delivery to any client or server incommunication with the appliance 200. For example, in one embodiment,the appliance 200 transmits the monitoring agent 197 to a client uponreceiving a request to establish a transport layer connection. In otherembodiments, the appliance 200 transmits the monitoring agent 197 uponestablishing the transport layer connection with the client 102. Inanother embodiment, the appliance 200 transmits the monitoring agent 197to the client upon intercepting or detecting a request for a web page.In yet another embodiment, the appliance 200 transmits the monitoringagent 197 to a client or a server in response to a request from themonitoring server 198. In one embodiment, the appliance 200 transmitsthe monitoring agent 197 to a second appliance 200′ or appliance 205.

In other embodiments, the appliance 200 executes the monitoring agent197. In one embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 measures and monitorsthe performance of any application, program, process, service, task orthread executing on the appliance 200. For example, the monitoring agent197 may monitor and measure performance and operation of vServers275A-275N. In another embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 measures andmonitors the performance of any transport layer connections of theappliance 200. In some embodiments, the monitoring agent 197 measuresand monitors the performance of any user sessions traversing theappliance 200. In one embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 measures andmonitors the performance of any virtual private network connectionsand/or sessions traversing the appliance 200, such an SSL VPN session.In still further embodiments, the monitoring agent 197 measures andmonitors the memory, CPU and disk usage and performance of the appliance200. In yet another embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 measures andmonitors the performance of any acceleration technique 288 performed bythe appliance 200, such as SSL offloading, connection pooling andmultiplexing, caching, and compression. In some embodiments, themonitoring agent 197 measures and monitors the performance of any loadbalancing and/or content switching 284 performed by the appliance 200.In other embodiments, the monitoring agent 197 measures and monitors theperformance of application firewall 290 protection and processingperformed by the appliance 200.

C. Client Agent

Referring now to FIG. 3, an embodiment of the client agent 120 isdepicted. The client 102 includes a client agent 120 for establishingand exchanging communications with the appliance 200 and/or server 106via a network 104. In brief overview, the client 102 operates oncomputing device 100 having an operating system with a kernel mode 302and a user mode 303, and a network stack 310 with one or more layers 310a-310 b. The client 102 may have installed and/or execute one or moreapplications. In some embodiments, one or more applications maycommunicate via the network stack 310 to a network 104. One of theapplications, such as a web browser, may also include a first program322. For example, the first program 322 may be used in some embodimentsto install and/or execute the client agent 120, or any portion thereof.The client agent 120 includes an interception mechanism, or interceptor350, for intercepting network communications from the network stack 310from the one or more applications.

The network stack 310 of the client 102 may comprise any type and formof software, or hardware, or any combinations thereof, for providingconnectivity to and communications with a network. In one embodiment,the network stack 310 comprises a software implementation for a networkprotocol suite. The network stack 310 may comprise one or more networklayers, such as any networks layers of the Open Systems Interconnection(OSI) communications model as those skilled in the art recognize andappreciate. As such, the network stack 310 may comprise any type andform of protocols for any of the following layers of the OSI model: 1)physical link layer, 2) data link layer, 3) network layer, 4) transportlayer, 5) session layer, 6) presentation layer, and 7) applicationlayer. In one embodiment, the network stack 310 may comprise a transportcontrol protocol (TCP) over the network layer protocol of the internetprotocol (IP), generally referred to as TCP/IP. In some embodiments, theTCP/IP protocol may be carried over the Ethernet protocol, which maycomprise any of the family of IEEE wide-area-network (WAN) orlocal-area-network (LAN) protocols, such as those protocols covered bythe IEEE 802.3. In some embodiments, the network stack 310 comprises anytype and form of a wireless protocol, such as IEEE 802.11 and/or mobileinternet protocol.

In view of a TCP/IP based network, any TCP/IP based protocol may beused, including Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI)(email), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), HyperText Transfer Protocol(HTTP), Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol (file transfer),Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) protocol, Remote DesktopProtocol (RDP), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Mobile IP protocol,and Voice Over IP (VoIP) protocol. In another embodiment, the networkstack 310 comprises any type and form of transport control protocol,such as a modified transport control protocol, for example a TransactionTCP (T/TCP), TCP with selection acknowledgements (TCP-SACK), TCP withlarge windows (TCP-LW), a congestion prediction protocol such as theTCP-Vegas protocol, and a TCP spoofing protocol. In other embodiments,any type and form of user datagram protocol (UDP), such as UDP over IP,may be used by the network stack 310, such as for voice communicationsor real-time data communications.

Furthermore, the network stack 310 may include one or more networkdrivers supporting the one or more layers, such as a TCP driver or anetwork layer driver. The network drivers may be included as part of theoperating system of the computing device 100 or as part of any networkinterface cards or other network access components of the computingdevice 100. In some embodiments, any of the network drivers of thenetwork stack 310 may be customized, modified or adapted to provide acustom or modified portion of the network stack 310 in support of any ofthe techniques described herein. In other embodiments, the accelerationprogram 302 is designed and constructed to operate with or work inconjunction with the network stack 310 installed or otherwise providedby the operating system of the client 102.

The network stack 310 comprises any type and form of interfaces forreceiving, obtaining, providing or otherwise accessing any informationand data related to network communications of the client 102. In oneembodiment, an interface to the network stack 310 comprises anapplication programming interface (API). The interface may also compriseany function call, hooking or filtering mechanism, event or call backmechanism, or any type of interfacing technique. The network stack 310via the interface may receive or provide any type and form of datastructure, such as an object, related to functionality or operation ofthe network stack 310. For example, the data structure may compriseinformation and data related to a network packet or one or more networkpackets. In some embodiments, the data structure comprises a portion ofthe network packet processed at a protocol layer of the network stack310, such as a network packet of the transport layer. In someembodiments, the data structure 325 comprises a kernel-level datastructure, while in other embodiments, the data structure 325 comprisesa user-mode data structure. A kernel-level data structure may comprise adata structure obtained or related to a portion of the network stack 310operating in kernel-mode 302, or a network driver or other softwarerunning in kernel-mode 302, or any data structure obtained or receivedby a service, process, task, thread or other executable instructionsrunning or operating in kernel-mode of the operating system.

Additionally, some portions of the network stack 310 may execute oroperate in kernel-mode 302, for example, the data link or network layer,while other portions execute or operate in user-mode 303, such as anapplication layer of the network stack 310. For example, a first portion310 a of the network stack may provide user-mode access to the networkstack 310 to an application while a second portion 310 a of the networkstack 310 provides access to a network. In some embodiments, a firstportion 310 a of the network stack may comprise one or more upper layersof the network stack 310, such as any of layers 5-7. In otherembodiments, a second portion 310 b of the network stack 310 comprisesone or more lower layers, such as any of layers 1-4. Each of the firstportion 310 a and second portion 310 b of the network stack 310 maycomprise any portion of the network stack 310, at any one or morenetwork layers, in user-mode 203, kernel-mode, 202, or combinationsthereof, or at any portion of a network layer or interface point to anetwork layer or any portion of or interface point to the user-mode 203and kernel-mode 203.

The interceptor 350 may comprise software, hardware, or any combinationof software and hardware. In one embodiment, the interceptor 350intercept a network communication at any point in the network stack 310,and redirects or transmits the network communication to a destinationdesired, managed or controlled by the interceptor 350 or client agent120. For example, the interceptor 350 may intercept a networkcommunication of a network stack 310 of a first network and transmit thenetwork communication to the appliance 200 for transmission on a secondnetwork 104. In some embodiments, the interceptor 350 comprises any typeinterceptor 350 comprises a driver, such as a network driver constructedand designed to interface and work with the network stack 310. In someembodiments, the client agent 120 and/or interceptor 350 operates at oneor more layers of the network stack 310, such as at the transport layer.In one embodiment, the interceptor 350 comprises a filter driver,hooking mechanism, or any form and type of suitable network driverinterface that interfaces to the transport layer of the network stack,such as via the transport driver interface (TDI). In some embodiments,the interceptor 350 interfaces to a first protocol layer, such as thetransport layer and another protocol layer, such as any layer above thetransport protocol layer, for example, an application protocol layer. Inone embodiment, the interceptor 350 may comprise a driver complying withthe Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS), or a NDIS driver. Inanother embodiment, the interceptor 350 may comprise a mini-filter or amini-port driver. In one embodiment, the interceptor 350, or portionthereof, operates in kernel-mode 202. In another embodiment, theinterceptor 350, or portion thereof, operates in user-mode 203. In someembodiments, a portion of the interceptor 350 operates in kernel-mode202 while another portion of the interceptor 350 operates in user-mode203. In other embodiments, the client agent 120 operates in user-mode203 but interfaces via the interceptor 350 to a kernel-mode driver,process, service, task or portion of the operating system, such as toobtain a kernel-level data structure 225. In further embodiments, theinterceptor 350 is a user-mode application or program, such asapplication.

In one embodiment, the interceptor 350 intercepts any transport layerconnection requests. In these embodiments, the interceptor 350 executetransport layer application programming interface (API) calls to set thedestination information, such as destination IP address and/or port to adesired location for the location. In this manner, the interceptor 350intercepts and redirects the transport layer connection to a IP addressand port controlled or managed by the interceptor 350 or client agent120. In one embodiment, the interceptor 350 sets the destinationinformation for the connection to a local IP address and port of theclient 102 on which the client agent 120 is listening. For example, theclient agent 120 may comprise a proxy service listening on a local IPaddress and port for redirected transport layer communications. In someembodiments, the client agent 120 then communicates the redirectedtransport layer communication to the appliance 200.

In some embodiments, the interceptor 350 intercepts a Domain NameService (DNS) request. In one embodiment, the client agent 120 and/orinterceptor 350 resolves the DNS request. In another embodiment, theinterceptor transmits the intercepted DNS request to the appliance 200for DNS resolution. In one embodiment, the appliance 200 resolves theDNS request and communicates the DNS response to the client agent 120.In some embodiments, the appliance 200 resolves the DNS request viaanother appliance 200′ or a DNS server 106.

In yet another embodiment, the client agent 120 may comprise two agents120 and 120′. In one embodiment, a first agent 120 may comprise aninterceptor 350 operating at the network layer of the network stack 310.In some embodiments, the first agent 120 intercepts network layerrequests such as Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) requests(e.g., ping and traceroute). In other embodiments, the second agent 120′may operate at the transport layer and intercept transport layercommunications. In some embodiments, the first agent 120 interceptscommunications at one layer of the network stack 210 and interfaces withor communicates the intercepted communication to the second agent 120′.

The client agent 120 and/or interceptor 350 may operate at or interfacewith a protocol layer in a manner transparent to any other protocollayer of the network stack 310. For example, in one embodiment, theinterceptor 350 operates or interfaces with the transport layer of thenetwork stack 310 transparently to any protocol layer below thetransport layer, such as the network layer, and any protocol layer abovethe transport layer, such as the session, presentation or applicationlayer protocols. This allows the other protocol layers of the networkstack 310 to operate as desired and without modification for using theinterceptor 350. As such, the client agent 120 and/or interceptor 350can interface with the transport layer to secure, optimize, accelerate,route or load-balance any communications provided via any protocolcarried by the transport layer, such as any application layer protocolover TCP/IP.

Furthermore, the client agent 120 and/or interceptor may operate at orinterface with the network stack 310 in a manner transparent to anyapplication, a user of the client 102, and any other computing device,such as a server, in communications with the client 102. The clientagent 120 and/or interceptor 350 may be installed and/or executed on theclient 102 in a manner without modification of an application. In someembodiments, the user of the client 102 or a computing device incommunications with the client 102 are not aware of the existence,execution or operation of the client agent 120 and/or interceptor 350.As such, in some embodiments, the client agent 120 and/or interceptor350 is installed, executed, and/or operated transparently to anapplication, user of the client 102, another computing device, such as aserver, or any of the protocol layers above and/or below the protocollayer interfaced to by the interceptor 350.

The client agent 120 includes an acceleration program 302, a streamingclient 306, a collection agent 304, and/or monitoring agent 197. In oneembodiment, the client agent 120 comprises an Independent ComputingArchitecture (ICA) client, or any portion thereof, developed by CitrixSystems, Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and is also referred to as anICA client. In some embodiments, the client 120 comprises an applicationstreaming client 306 for streaming an application from a server 106 to aclient 102. In some embodiments, the client agent 120 comprises anacceleration program 302 for accelerating communications between client102 and server 106. In another embodiment, the client agent 120 includesa collection agent 304 for performing end-point detection/scanning andcollecting end-point information for the appliance 200 and/or server106.

In some embodiments, the acceleration program 302 comprises aclient-side acceleration program for performing one or more accelerationtechniques to accelerate, enhance or otherwise improve a client'scommunications with and/or access to a server 106, such as accessing anapplication provided by a server 106. The logic, functions, and/oroperations of the executable instructions of the acceleration program302 may perform one or more of the following acceleration techniques: 1)multi-protocol compression, 2) transport control protocol pooling, 3)transport control protocol multiplexing, 4) transport control protocolbuffering, and 5) caching via a cache manager. Additionally, theacceleration program 302 may perform encryption and/or decryption of anycommunications received and/or transmitted by the client 102. In someembodiments, the acceleration program 302 performs one or more of theacceleration techniques in an integrated manner or fashion.Additionally, the acceleration program 302 can perform compression onany of the protocols, or multiple-protocols, carried as a payload of anetwork packet of the transport layer protocol.

The streaming client 306 comprises an application, program, process,service, task or executable instructions for receiving and executing astreamed application from a server 106. A server 106 may stream one ormore application data files to the streaming client 306 for playing,executing or otherwise causing to be executed the application on theclient 102. In some embodiments, the server 106 transmits a set ofcompressed or packaged application data files to the streaming client306. In some embodiments, the plurality of application files arecompressed and stored on a file server within an archive file such as aCAB, ZIP, SIT, TAR, JAR or other archive. In one embodiment, the server106 decompresses, unpackages or unarchives the application files andtransmits the files to the client 102. In another embodiment, the client102 decompresses, unpackages or unarchives the application files. Thestreaming client 306 dynamically installs the application, or portionthereof, and executes the application. In one embodiment, the streamingclient 306 may be an executable program. In some embodiments, thestreaming client 306 may be able to launch another executable program.

The collection agent 304 comprises an application, program, process,service, task or executable instructions for identifying, obtainingand/or collecting information about the client 102. In some embodiments,the appliance 200 transmits the collection agent 304 to the client 102or client agent 120. The collection agent 304 may be configuredaccording to one or more policies of the policy engine 236 of theappliance. In other embodiments, the collection agent 304 transmitscollected information on the client 102 to the appliance 200. In oneembodiment, the policy engine 236 of the appliance 200 uses thecollected information to determine and provide access, authenticationand authorization control of the client's connection to a network 104.

In one embodiment, the collection agent 304 comprises an end-pointdetection and scanning mechanism, which identifies and determines one ormore attributes or characteristics of the client. For example, thecollection agent 304 may identify and determine any one or more of thefollowing client-side attributes: 1) the operating system an/or aversion of an operating system, 2) a service pack of the operatingsystem, 3) a running service, 4) a running process, and 5) a file. Thecollection agent 304 may also identify and determine the presence orversions of any one or more of the following on the client: 1) antivirussoftware, 2) personal firewall software, 3) anti-spam software, and 4)internet security software. The policy engine 236 may have one or morepolicies based on any one or more of the attributes or characteristicsof the client or client-side attributes.

In some embodiments, the client agent 120 includes a monitoring agent197 as discussed in conjunction with FIGS. 1D and 2B. The monitoringagent 197 may be any type and form of script, such as Visual Basic orJava script. In one embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 monitors andmeasures performance of any portion of the client agent 120. Forexample, in some embodiments, the monitoring agent 197 monitors andmeasures performance of the acceleration program 302. In anotherembodiment, the monitoring agent 197 monitors and measures performanceof the streaming client 306. In other embodiments, the monitoring agent197 monitors and measures performance of the collection agent 304. Instill another embodiment, the monitoring agent 197 monitors and measuresperformance of the interceptor 350. In some embodiments, the monitoringagent 197 monitors and measures any resource of the client 102, such asmemory, CPU and disk.

The monitoring agent 197 may monitor and measure performance of anyapplication of the client. In one embodiment, the monitoring agent 197monitors and measures performance of a browser on the client 102. Insome embodiments, the monitoring agent 197 monitors and measuresperformance of any application delivered via the client agent 120. Inother embodiments, the monitoring agent 197 measures and monitors enduser response times for an application, such as web-based or HTTPresponse times. The monitoring agent 197 may monitor and measureperformance of an ICA or RDP client. In another embodiment, themonitoring agent 197 measures and monitors metrics for a user session orapplication session. In some embodiments, monitoring agent 197 measuresand monitors an ICA or RDP session. In one embodiment, the monitoringagent 197 measures and monitors the performance of the appliance 200 inaccelerating delivery of an application and/or data to the client 102.

In some embodiments and still referring to FIG. 3, a first program 322may be used to install and/or execute the client agent 120, or portionthereof, such as the interceptor 350, automatically, silently,transparently, or otherwise. In one embodiment, the first program 322comprises a plugin component, such an ActiveX control or Java control orscript that is loaded into and executed by an application. For example,the first program comprises an ActiveX control loaded and run by a webbrowser application, such as in the memory space or context of theapplication. In another embodiment, the first program 322 comprises aset of executable instructions loaded into and run by the application,such as a browser. In one embodiment, the first program 322 comprises adesigned and constructed program to install the client agent 120. Insome embodiments, the first program 322 obtains, downloads, or receivesthe client agent 120 via the network from another computing device. Inanother embodiment, the first program 322 is an installer program or aplug and play manager for installing programs, such as network drivers,on the operating system of the client 102.

D. Systems and Methods for Providing Virtualized Application DeliveryController

Referring now to FIG. 4A, a block diagram depicts one embodiment of avirtualization environment 400. In brief overview, a computing device100 includes a hypervisor layer, a virtualization layer, and a hardwarelayer. The hypervisor layer includes a hypervisor 401 (also referred toas a virtualization manager) that allocates and manages access to anumber of physical resources in the hardware layer (e.g., theprocessor(s) 421, and disk(s) 428) by at least one virtual machineexecuting in the virtualization layer. The virtualization layer includesat least one operating system 410 and a plurality of virtual resourcesallocated to the at least one operating system 410. Virtual resourcesmay include, without limitation, a plurality of virtual processors 432a, 432 b, 432 c (generally 432), and virtual disks 442 a, 442 b, 442 c(generally 442), as well as virtual resources such as virtual memory andvirtual network interfaces. The plurality of virtual resources and theoperating system 410 may be referred to as a virtual machine 406. Avirtual machine 406 may include a control operating system 405 incommunication with the hypervisor 401 and used to execute applicationsfor managing and configuring other virtual machines on the computingdevice 100.

In greater detail, a hypervisor 401 may provide virtual resources to anoperating system in any manner which simulates the operating systemhaving access to a physical device. A hypervisor 401 may provide virtualresources to any number of guest operating systems 410 a, 410 b(generally 410). In some embodiments, a computing device 100 executesone or more types of hypervisors. In these embodiments, hypervisors maybe used to emulate virtual hardware, partition physical hardware,virtualize physical hardware, and execute virtual machines that provideaccess to computing environments. Hypervisors may include thosemanufactured by VMWare, Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif.; the XEN hypervisor,an open source product whose development is overseen by the open sourceXen.org community; HyperV, VirtualServer or virtual PC hypervisorsprovided by Microsoft, or others. In some embodiments, a computingdevice 100 executing a hypervisor that creates a virtual machineplatform on which guest operating systems may execute is referred to asa host server. In one of these embodiments, for example, the computingdevice 100 is a XEN SERVER provided by Citrix Systems, Inc., of FortLauderdale, Fla.

In some embodiments, a hypervisor 401 executes within an operatingsystem executing on a computing device. In one of these embodiments, acomputing device executing an operating system and a hypervisor 401 maybe said to have a host operating system (the operating system executingon the computing device), and a guest operating system (an operatingsystem executing within a computing resource partition provided by thehypervisor 401). In other embodiments, a hypervisor 401 interactsdirectly with hardware on a computing device, instead of executing on ahost operating system. In one of these embodiments, the hypervisor 401may be said to be executing on “bare metal,” referring to the hardwarecomprising the computing device.

In some embodiments, a hypervisor 401 may create a virtual machine 406a-c (generally 406) in which an operating system 410 executes. In one ofthese embodiments, for example, the hypervisor 401 loads a virtualmachine image to create a virtual machine 406. In another of theseembodiments, the hypervisor 401 executes an operating system 410 withinthe virtual machine 406. In still another of these embodiments, thevirtual machine 406 executes an operating system 410.

In some embodiments, the hypervisor 401 controls processor schedulingand memory partitioning for a virtual machine 406 executing on thecomputing device 100. In one of these embodiments, the hypervisor 401controls the execution of at least one virtual machine 406. In anotherof these embodiments, the hypervisor 401 presents at least one virtualmachine 406 with an abstraction of at least one hardware resourceprovided by the computing device 100. In other embodiments, thehypervisor 401 controls whether and how physical processor capabilitiesare presented to the virtual machine 406.

A control operating system 405 may execute at least one application formanaging and configuring the guest operating systems. In one embodiment,the control operating system 405 may execute an administrativeapplication, such as an application including a user interface providingadministrators with access to functionality for managing the executionof a virtual machine, including functionality for executing a virtualmachine, terminating an execution of a virtual machine, or identifying atype of physical resource for allocation to the virtual machine. Inanother embodiment, the hypervisor 401 executes the control operatingsystem 405 within a virtual machine 406 created by the hypervisor 401.In still another embodiment, the control operating system 405 executesin a virtual machine 406 that is authorized to directly access physicalresources on the computing device 100. In some embodiments, a controloperating system 405 a on a computing device 100 a may exchange datawith a control operating system 405 b on a computing device 100 b, viacommunications between a hypervisor 401 a and a hypervisor 401 b. Inthis way, one or more computing devices 100 may exchange data with oneor more of the other computing devices 100 regarding processors andother physical resources available in a pool of resources. In one ofthese embodiments, this functionality allows a hypervisor to manage apool of resources distributed across a plurality of physical computingdevices. In another of these embodiments, multiple hypervisors manageone or more of the guest operating systems executed on one of thecomputing devices 100.

In one embodiment, the control operating system 405 executes in avirtual machine 406 that is authorized to interact with at least oneguest operating system 410. In another embodiment, a guest operatingsystem 410 communicates with the control operating system 405 via thehypervisor 401 in order to request access to a disk or a network. Instill another embodiment, the guest operating system 410 and the controloperating system 405 may communicate via a communication channelestablished by the hypervisor 401, such as, for example, via a pluralityof shared memory pages made available by the hypervisor 401.

In some embodiments, the control operating system 405 includes a networkback-end driver for communicating directly with networking hardwareprovided by the computing device 100. In one of these embodiments, thenetwork back-end driver processes at least one virtual machine requestfrom at least one guest operating system 110. In other embodiments, thecontrol operating system 405 includes a block back-end driver forcommunicating with a storage element on the computing device 100. In oneof these embodiments, the block back-end driver reads and writes datafrom the storage element based upon at least one request received from aguest operating system 410.

In one embodiment, the control operating system 405 includes a toolsstack 404. In another embodiment, a tools stack 404 providesfunctionality for interacting with the hypervisor 401, communicatingwith other control operating systems 405 (for example, on a secondcomputing device 100 b), or managing virtual machines 406 b, 406 c onthe computing device 100. In another embodiment, the tools stack 404includes customized applications for providing improved managementfunctionality to an administrator of a virtual machine farm. In someembodiments, at least one of the tools stack 404 and the controloperating system 405 include a management API that provides an interfacefor remotely configuring and controlling virtual machines 406 running ona computing device 100. In other embodiments, the control operatingsystem 405 communicates with the hypervisor 401 through the tools stack404.

In one embodiment, the hypervisor 401 executes a guest operating system410 within a virtual machine 406 created by the hypervisor 401. Inanother embodiment, the guest operating system 410 provides a user ofthe computing device 100 with access to resources within a computingenvironment. In still another embodiment, a resource includes a program,an application, a document, a file, a plurality of applications, aplurality of files, an executable program file, a desktop environment, acomputing environment, or other resource made available to a user of thecomputing device 100. In yet another embodiment, the resource may bedelivered to the computing device 100 via a plurality of access methodsincluding, but not limited to, conventional installation directly on thecomputing device 100, delivery to the computing device 100 via a methodfor application streaming, delivery to the computing device 100 ofoutput data generated by an execution of the resource on a secondcomputing device 100′ and communicated to the computing device 100 via apresentation layer protocol, delivery to the computing device 100 ofoutput data generated by an execution of the resource via a virtualmachine executing on a second computing device 100′, or execution from aremovable storage device connected to the computing device 100, such asa USB device, or via a virtual machine executing on the computing device100 and generating output data. In some embodiments, the computingdevice 100 transmits output data generated by the execution of theresource to another computing device 100′.

In one embodiment, the guest operating system 410, in conjunction withthe virtual machine on which it executes, forms a fully-virtualizedvirtual machine which is not aware that it is a virtual machine; such amachine may be referred to as a “Domain U HVM (Hardware Virtual Machine)virtual machine”. In another embodiment, a fully-virtualized machineincludes software emulating a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) in orderto execute an operating system within the fully-virtualized machine. Instill another embodiment, a fully-virtualized machine may include adriver that provides functionality by communicating with the hypervisor401. In such an embodiment, the driver may be aware that it executeswithin a virtualized environment. In another embodiment, the guestoperating system 410, in conjunction with the virtual machine on whichit executes, forms a paravirtualized virtual machine, which is awarethat it is a virtual machine; such a machine may be referred to as a“Domain U PV virtual machine”. In another embodiment, a paravirtualizedmachine includes additional drivers that a fully-virtualized machinedoes not include. In still another embodiment, the paravirtualizedmachine includes the network back-end driver and the block back-enddriver included in a control operating system 405, as described above.

Referring now to FIG. 4B, a block diagram depicts one embodiment of aplurality of networked computing devices in a system in which at leastone physical host executes a virtual machine. In brief overview, thesystem includes a management component 404 and a hypervisor 401. Thesystem includes a plurality of computing devices 100, a plurality ofvirtual machines 406, a plurality of hypervisors 401, a plurality ofmanagement components referred to variously as tools stacks 404 ormanagement components 404, and a physical resource 421, 428. Theplurality of physical machines 100 may each be provided as computingdevices 100, described above in connection with FIGS. 1E-1H and 4A.

In greater detail, a physical disk 428 is provided by a computing device100 and stores at least a portion of a virtual disk 442. In someembodiments, a virtual disk 442 is associated with a plurality ofphysical disks 428. In one of these embodiments, one or more computingdevices 100 may exchange data with one or more of the other computingdevices 100 regarding processors and other physical resources availablein a pool of resources, allowing a hypervisor to manage a pool ofresources distributed across a plurality of physical computing devices.In some embodiments, a computing device 100 on which a virtual machine406 executes is referred to as a physical host 100 or as a host machine100.

The hypervisor executes on a processor on the computing device 100. Thehypervisor allocates, to a virtual disk, an amount of access to thephysical disk. In one embodiment, the hypervisor 401 allocates an amountof space on the physical disk. In another embodiment, the hypervisor 401allocates a plurality of pages on the physical disk. In someembodiments, the hypervisor provisions the virtual disk 442 as part of aprocess of initializing and executing a virtual machine 450.

In one embodiment, the management component 404 a is referred to as apool management component 404 a. In another embodiment, a managementoperating system 405 a, which may be referred to as a control operatingsystem 405 a, includes the management component. In some embodiments,the management component is referred to as a tools stack. In one ofthese embodiments, the management component is the tools stack 404described above in connection with FIG. 4A. In other embodiments, themanagement component 404 provides a user interface for receiving, from auser such as an administrator, an identification of a virtual machine406 to provision and/or execute. In still other embodiments, themanagement component 404 provides a user interface for receiving, from auser such as an administrator, the request for migration of a virtualmachine 406 b from one physical machine 100 to another. In furtherembodiments, the management component 404 a identifies a computingdevice 100 b on which to execute a requested virtual machine 406 d andinstructs the hypervisor 401 b on the identified computing device 100 bto execute the identified virtual machine; such a management componentmay be referred to as a pool management component.

Referring now to FIG. 4C, embodiments of a virtual application deliverycontroller or virtual appliance 450 are depicted. In brief overview, anyof the functionality and/or embodiments of the appliance 200 (e.g., anapplication delivery controller) described above in connection withFIGS. 2A and 2B may be deployed in any embodiment of the virtualizedenvironment described above in connection with FIGS. 4A and 4B. Insteadof the functionality of the application delivery controller beingdeployed in the form of an appliance 200, such functionality may bedeployed in a virtualized environment 400 on any computing device 100,such as a client 102, server 106 or appliance 200.

Referring now to FIG. 4C, a diagram of an embodiment of a virtualappliance 450 operating on a hypervisor 401 of a server 106 is depicted.As with the appliance 200 of FIGS. 2A and 2B, the virtual appliance 450may provide functionality for availability, performance, offload andsecurity. For availability, the virtual appliance may perform loadbalancing between layers 4 and 7 of the network and may also performintelligent service health monitoring. For performance increases vianetwork traffic acceleration, the virtual appliance may perform cachingand compression. To offload processing of any servers, the virtualappliance may perform connection multiplexing and pooling and/or SSLprocessing. For security, the virtual appliance may perform any of theapplication firewall functionality and SSL VPN function of appliance200.

Any of the modules of the appliance 200 as described in connection withFIG. 2A may be packaged, combined, designed or constructed in a form ofthe virtualized appliance delivery controller 450 deployable as one ormore software modules or components executable in a virtualizedenvironment 300 or non-virtualized environment on any server, such as anoff the shelf server. For example, the virtual appliance may be providedin the form of an installation package to install on a computing device.With reference to FIG. 2A, any of the cache manager 232, policy engine236, compression 238, encryption engine 234, packet engine 240, GUI 210,CLI 212, shell services 214 and health monitoring programs 216 may bedesigned and constructed as a software component or module to run on anyoperating system of a computing device and/or of a virtualizedenvironment 300. Instead of using the encryption processor 260,processor 262, memory 264 and network stack 267 of the appliance 200,the virtualized appliance 400 may use any of these resources as providedby the virtualized environment 400 or as otherwise available on theserver 106.

Still referring to FIG. 4C, and in brief overview, any one or morevServers 275A-275N may be in operation or executed in a virtualizedenvironment 400 of any type of computing device 100, such as any server106. Any of the modules or functionality of the appliance 200 describedin connection with FIG. 2B may be designed and constructed to operate ineither a virtualized or non-virtualized environment of a server. Any ofthe vServer 275, SSL VPN 280, Intranet UP 282, Switching 284, DNS 286,acceleration 288, App FW 280 and monitoring agent may be packaged,combined, designed or constructed in a form of application deliverycontroller 450 deployable as one or more software modules or componentsexecutable on a device and/or virtualized environment 400.

In some embodiments, a server may execute multiple virtual machines 406a-406 n in the virtualization environment with each virtual machinerunning the same or different embodiments of the virtual applicationdelivery controller 450. In some embodiments, the server may execute oneor more virtual appliances 450 on one or more virtual machines on a coreof a multi-core processing system. In some embodiments, the server mayexecute one or more virtual appliances 450 on one or more virtualmachines on each processor of a multiple processor device.

E. Systems and Methods for Providing A Multi-Core Architecture

In accordance with Moore's Law, the number of transistors that may beplaced on an integrated circuit may double approximately every twoyears. However, CPU speed increases may reach plateaus, for example CPUspeed has been around 3.5-4 GHz range since 2005. In some cases, CPUmanufacturers may not rely on CPU speed increases to gain additionalperformance. Some CPU manufacturers may add additional cores to theirprocessors to provide additional performance. Products, such as those ofsoftware and networking vendors, that rely on CPUs for performance gainsmay improve their performance by leveraging these multi-core CPUs. Thesoftware designed and constructed for a single CPU may be redesignedand/or rewritten to take advantage of a multi-threaded, parallelarchitecture or otherwise a multi-core architecture.

A multi-core architecture of the appliance 200, referred to as nCore ormulti-core technology, allows the appliance in some embodiments to breakthe single core performance barrier and to leverage the power ofmulti-core CPUs. In the previous architecture described in connectionwith FIG. 2A, a single network or packet engine is run. The multiplecores of the nCore technology and architecture allow multiple packetengines to run concurrently and/or in parallel. With a packet enginerunning on each core, the appliance architecture leverages theprocessing capacity of additional cores. In some embodiments, thisprovides up to a 7× increase in performance and scalability.

Illustrated in FIG. 5A are some embodiments of work, task, load ornetwork traffic distribution across one or more processor coresaccording to a type of parallelism or parallel computing scheme, such asfunctional parallelism, data parallelism or flow-based data parallelism.In brief overview, FIG. 5A illustrates embodiments of a multi-coresystem such as an appliance 200′ with n-cores, a total of cores numbers1 through N. In one embodiment, work, load or network traffic can bedistributed among a first core 505A, a second core 505B, a third core505C, a fourth core 505D, a fifth core 505E, a sixth core 505F, aseventh core 505G, and so on such that distribution is across all or twoor more of the n cores 505N (hereinafter referred to collectively ascores 505.) There may be multiple VIPs 275 each running on a respectivecore of the plurality of cores. There may be multiple packet engines 240each running on a respective core of the plurality of cores. Any of theapproaches used may lead to different, varying or similar work load orperformance level 515 across any of the cores. For a functionalparallelism approach, each core may run a different function of thefunctionalities provided by the packet engine, a VIP 275 or appliance200. In a data parallelism approach, data may be paralleled ordistributed across the cores based on the Network Interface Card (NIC)or VIP 275 receiving the data. In another data parallelism approach,processing may be distributed across the cores by distributing dataflows to each core.

In further detail to FIG. 5A, in some embodiments, load, work or networktraffic can be distributed among cores 505 according to functionalparallelism 500. Functional parallelism may be based on each coreperforming one or more respective functions. In some embodiments, afirst core may perform a first function while a second core performs asecond function. In functional parallelism approach, the functions to beperformed by the multi-core system are divided and distributed to eachcore according to functionality. In some embodiments, functionalparallelism may be referred to as task parallelism and may be achievedwhen each processor or core executes a different process or function onthe same or different data. The core or processor may execute the sameor different code. In some cases, different execution threads or codemay communicate with one another as they work. Communication may takeplace to pass data from one thread to the next as part of a workflow.

In some embodiments, distributing work across the cores 505 according tofunctional parallelism 500, can comprise distributing network trafficaccording to a particular function such as network input/outputmanagement (NW I/O) 510A, secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption anddecryption 510B and transmission control protocol (TCP) functions 510C.This may lead to a work, performance or computing load 515 based on avolume or level of functionality being used. In some embodiments,distributing work across the cores 505 according to data parallelism540, can comprise distributing an amount of work 515 based ondistributing data associated with a particular hardware or softwarecomponent. In some embodiments, distributing work across the cores 505according to flow-based data parallelism 520, can comprise distributingdata based on a context or flow such that the amount of work 515A-N oneach core may be similar, substantially equal or relatively evenlydistributed.

In the case of the functional parallelism approach, each core may beconfigured to run one or more functionalities of the plurality offunctionalities provided by the packet engine or VIP of the appliance.For example, core 1 may perform network I/O processing for the appliance200′ while core 2 performs TCP connection management for the appliance.Likewise, core 3 may perform SSL offloading while core 4 may performlayer 7 or application layer processing and traffic management. Each ofthe cores may perform the same function or different functions. Each ofthe cores may perform more than one function. Any of the cores may runany of the functionality or portions thereof identified and/or describedin conjunction with FIGS. 2A and 2B. In this the approach, the workacross the cores may be divided by function in either a coarse-grainedor fine-grained manner. In some cases, as illustrated in FIG. 5A,division by function may lead to different cores running at differentlevels of performance or load 515.

In the case of the functional parallelism approach, each core may beconfigured to run one or more functionalities of the plurality offunctionalities provided by the packet engine of the appliance. Forexample, core 1 may perform network I/O processing for the appliance200′ while core 2 performs TCP connection management for the appliance.Likewise, core 3 may perform SSL offloading while core 4 may performlayer 7 or application layer processing and traffic management. Each ofthe cores may perform the same function or different functions. Each ofthe cores may perform more than one function. Any of the cores may runany of the functionality or portions thereof identified and/or describedin conjunction with FIGS. 2A and 2B. In this the approach, the workacross the cores may be divided by function in either a coarse-grainedor fine-grained manner. In some cases, as illustrated in FIG. 5Adivision by function may lead to different cores running at differentlevels of load or performance.

The functionality or tasks may be distributed in any arrangement andscheme. For example, FIG. 5B illustrates a first core, Core 1 505A,processing applications and processes associated with network I/Ofunctionality 510A. Network traffic associated with network I/O, in someembodiments, can be associated with a particular port number. Thus,outgoing and incoming packets having a port destination associated withNW I/O 510A will be directed towards Core 1 505A which is dedicated tohandling all network traffic associated with the NW I/O port. Similarly,Core 2 505B is dedicated to handling functionality associated with SSLprocessing and Core 4 505D may be dedicated handling all TCP levelprocessing and functionality.

While FIG. 5A illustrates functions such as network I/O, SSL and TCP,other functions can be assigned to cores. These other functions caninclude any one or more of the functions or operations described herein.For example, any of the functions described in conjunction with FIGS. 2Aand 2B may be distributed across the cores on a functionality basis. Insome cases, a first VIP 275A may run on a first core while a second VIP275B with a different configuration may run on a second core. In someembodiments, each core 505 can handle a particular functionality suchthat each core 505 can handle the processing associated with thatparticular function. For example, Core 2 505B may handle SSL offloadingwhile Core 4 505D may handle application layer processing and trafficmanagement.

In other embodiments, work, load or network traffic may be distributedamong cores 505 according to any type and form of data parallelism 540.In some embodiments, data parallelism may be achieved in a multi-coresystem by each core performing the same task or functionally ondifferent pieces of distributed data. In some embodiments, a singleexecution thread or code controls operations on all pieces of data. Inother embodiments, different threads or instructions control theoperation, but may execute the same code. In some embodiments, dataparallelism is achieved from the perspective of a packet engine,vServers (VIPs) 275A-C, network interface cards (NIC) 542D-E and/or anyother networking hardware or software included on or associated with anappliance 200. For example, each core may run the same packet engine orVIP code or configuration but operate on different sets of distributeddata. Each networking hardware or software construct can receivedifferent, varying or substantially the same amount of data, and as aresult may have varying, different or relatively the same amount of load515.

In the case of a data parallelism approach, the work may be divided upand distributed based on VIPs, NICs and/or data flows of the VIPs orNICs. In one of these approaches, the work of the multi-core system maybe divided or distributed among the VIPs by having each VIP work on adistributed set of data. For example, each core may be configured to runone or more VIPs. Network traffic may be distributed to the core foreach VIP handling that traffic. In another of these approaches, the workof the appliance may be divided or distributed among the cores based onwhich NIC receives the network traffic. For example, network traffic ofa first NIC may be distributed to a first core while network traffic ofa second NIC may be distributed to a second core.

In some cases, a core may process data from multiple NICs. While FIG. 5Aillustrates a single vServer associated with a single core 505, as isthe case for VIP1 275A, VIP2 275B and VIP3 275C. In some embodiments, asingle vServer can be associated with one or more cores 505. Incontrast, one or more vServers can be associated with a single core 505.Associating a vServer with a core 505 may include that core 505 toprocess all functions associated with that particular vServer. In someembodiments, each core executes a VIP having the same code andconfiguration. In other embodiments, each core executes a VIP having thesame code but different configuration. In some embodiments, each coreexecutes a VIP having different code and the same or differentconfiguration.

Like vServers, NICs can also be associated with particular cores 505. Inmany embodiments, NICs can be connected to one or more cores 505 suchthat when a NIC receives or transmits data packets, a particular core505 handles the processing involved with receiving and transmitting thedata packets. In one embodiment, a single NIC can be associated with asingle core 505, as is the case with NIC1 542D and NIC2 542E. In otherembodiments, one or more NICs can be associated with a single core 505.In other embodiments, a single NIC can be associated with one or morecores 505. In these embodiments, load could be distributed amongst theone or more cores 505 such that each core 505 processes a substantiallysimilar amount of load. A core 505 associated with a NIC may process allfunctions and/or data associated with that particular NIC.

While distributing work across cores based on data of VIPs or NICs mayhave a level of independency, in some embodiments, this may lead tounbalanced use of cores as illustrated by the varying loads 515 of FIG.5A.

In some embodiments, load, work or network traffic can be distributedamong cores 505 based on any type and form of data flow. In another ofthese approaches, the work may be divided or distributed among coresbased on data flows. For example, network traffic between a client and aserver traversing the appliance may be distributed to and processed byone core of the plurality of cores. In some cases, the core initiallyestablishing the session or connection may be the core for which networktraffic for that session or connection is distributed. In someembodiments, the data flow is based on any unit or portion of networktraffic, such as a transaction, a request/response communication ortraffic originating from an application on a client. In this manner andin some embodiments, data flows between clients and servers traversingthe appliance 200′ may be distributed in a more balanced manner than theother approaches.

In flow-based data parallelism 520, distribution of data is related toany type of flow of data, such as request/response pairings,transactions, sessions, connections or application communications. Forexample, network traffic between a client and a server traversing theappliance may be distributed to and processed by one core of theplurality of cores. In some cases, the core initially establishing thesession or connection may be the core for which network traffic for thatsession or connection is distributed. The distribution of data flow maybe such that each core 505 carries a substantially equal or relativelyevenly distributed amount of load, data or network traffic.

In some embodiments, the data flow is based on any unit or portion ofnetwork traffic, such as a transaction, a request/response communicationor traffic originating from an application on a client. In this mannerand in some embodiments, data flows between clients and serverstraversing the appliance 200′ may be distributed in a more balancedmanner than the other approached. In one embodiment, data flow can bedistributed based on a transaction or a series of transactions. Thistransaction, in some embodiments, can be between a client and a serverand can be characterized by an IP address or other packet identifier.For example, Core 1 505A can be dedicated to transactions between aparticular client and a particular server, therefore the load 515A onCore 1 505A may be comprised of the network traffic associated with thetransactions between the particular client and server. Allocating thenetwork traffic to Core 1 505A can be accomplished by routing all datapackets originating from either the particular client or server to Core1 505A.

While work or load can be distributed to the cores based in part ontransactions, in other embodiments load or work can be allocated on aper packet basis. In these embodiments, the appliance 200 can interceptdata packets and allocate them to a core 505 having the least amount ofload. For example, the appliance 200 could allocate a first incomingdata packet to Core 1 505A because the load 515A on Core 1 is less thanthe load 515B-N on the rest of the cores 505B-N. Once the first datapacket is allocated to Core 1 505A, the amount of load 515A on Core 1505A is increased proportional to the amount of processing resourcesneeded to process the first data packet. When the appliance 200intercepts a second data packet, the appliance 200 will allocate theload to Core 4 505D because Core 4 505D has the second least amount ofload. Allocating data packets to the core with the least amount of loadcan, in some embodiments, ensure that the load 515A-N distributed toeach core 505 remains substantially equal.

In other embodiments, load can be allocated on a per unit basis where asection of network traffic is allocated to a particular core 505. Theabove-mentioned example illustrates load balancing on a per/packetbasis. In other embodiments, load can be allocated based on a number ofpackets such that every 10, 100 or 1000 packets are allocated to thecore 505 having the least amount of load. The number of packetsallocated to a core 505 can be a number determined by an application,user or administrator and can be any number greater than zero. In stillother embodiments, load can be allocated based on a time metric suchthat packets are distributed to a particular core 505 for apredetermined amount of time. In these embodiments, packets can bedistributed to a particular core 505 for five milliseconds or for anyperiod of time determined by a user, program, system, administrator orotherwise. After the predetermined time period elapses, data packets aretransmitted to a different core 505 for the predetermined period oftime.

Flow-based data parallelism methods for distributing work, load ornetwork traffic among the one or more cores 505 can comprise anycombination of the above-mentioned embodiments. These methods can becarried out by any part of the appliance 200, by an application or setof executable instructions executing on one of the cores 505, such asthe packet engine, or by any application, program or agent executing ona computing device in communication with the appliance 200.

The functional and data parallelism computing schemes illustrated inFIG. 5A can be combined in any manner to generate a hybrid parallelismor distributed processing scheme that encompasses function parallelism500, data parallelism 540, flow-based data parallelism 520 or anyportions thereof. In some cases, the multi-core system may use any typeand form of load balancing schemes to distribute load among the one ormore cores 505. The load balancing scheme may be used in any combinationwith any of the functional and data parallelism schemes or combinationsthereof.

Illustrated in FIG. 5B is an embodiment of a multi-core system 545,which may be any type and form of one or more systems, appliances,devices or components. This system 545, in some embodiments, can beincluded within an appliance 200 having one or more processing cores505A-N. The system 545 can further include one or more packet engines(PE) or packet processing engines (PPE) 548A-N communicating with amemory bus 556. The memory bus may be used to communicate with the oneor more processing cores 505A-N. Also included within the system 545 canbe one or more network interface cards (NIC) 552 and a flow distributor550 which can further communicate with the one or more processing cores505A-N. The flow distributor 550 can comprise a Receive Side Scaler(RSS) or Receive Side Scaling (RSS) module 560.

Further referring to FIG. 5B, and in more detail, in one embodiment thepacket engine(s) 548A-N can comprise any portion of the appliance 200described herein, such as any portion of the appliance described inFIGS. 2A and 2B. The packet engine(s) 548A-N can, in some embodiments,comprise any of the following elements: the packet engine 240, a networkstack 267; a cache manager 232; a policy engine 236; a compressionengine 238; an encryption engine 234; a GUI 210; a CLI 212; shellservices 214; monitoring programs 216; and any other software orhardware element able to receive data packets from one of either thememory bus 556 or the one of more cores 505A-N. In some embodiments, thepacket engine(s) 548A-N can comprise one or more vServers 275A-N, or anyportion thereof. In other embodiments, the packet engine(s) 548A-N canprovide any combination of the following functionalities: SSL VPN 280;Intranet UP 282; switching 284; DNS 286; packet acceleration 288; App FW280; monitoring such as the monitoring provided by a monitoring agent197; functionalities associated with functioning as a TCP stack; loadbalancing; SSL offloading and processing; content switching; policyevaluation; caching; compression; encoding; decompression; decoding;application firewall functionalities; XML processing and acceleration;and SSL VPN connectivity.

The packet engine(s) 548A-N can, in some embodiments, be associated witha particular server, user, client or network. When a packet engine 548becomes associated with a particular entity, that packet engine 548 canprocess data packets associated with that entity. For example, should apacket engine 548 be associated with a first user, that packet engine548 will process and operate on packets generated by the first user, orpackets having a destination address associated with the first user.Similarly, the packet engine 548 may choose not to be associated with aparticular entity such that the packet engine 548 can process andotherwise operate on any data packets not generated by that entity ordestined for that entity.

In some instances, the packet engine(s) 548A-N can be configured tocarry out the any of the functional and/or data parallelism schemesillustrated in FIG. 5A. In these instances, the packet engine(s) 548A-Ncan distribute functions or data among the processing cores 505A-N sothat the distribution is according to the parallelism or distributionscheme. In some embodiments, a single packet engine(s) 548A-N carriesout a load balancing scheme, while in other embodiments one or morepacket engine(s) 548A-N carry out a load balancing scheme. Each core505A-N, in one embodiment, can be associated with a particular packetengine 548 such that load balancing can be carried out by the packetengine. Load balancing may in this embodiment, require that each packetengine 548A-N associated with a core 505 communicate with the otherpacket engines associated with cores so that the packet engines 548A-Ncan collectively determine where to distribute load. One embodiment ofthis process can include an arbiter that receives votes from each packetengine for load. The arbiter can distribute load to each packet engine548A-N based in part on the age of the engine's vote and in some cases apriority value associated with the current amount of load on an engine'sassociated core 505.

Any of the packet engines running on the cores may run in user mode,kernel or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the packetengine operates as an application or program running is user orapplication space. In these embodiments, the packet engine may use anytype and form of interface to access any functionality provided by thekernel. In some embodiments, the packet engine operates in kernel modeor as part of the kernel. In some embodiments, a first portion of thepacket engine operates in user mode while a second portion of the packetengine operates in kernel mode. In some embodiments, a first packetengine on a first core executes in kernel mode while a second packetengine on a second core executes in user mode. In some embodiments, thepacket engine or any portions thereof operates on or in conjunction withthe NIC or any drivers thereof.

In some embodiments the memory bus 556 can be any type and form ofmemory or computer bus. While a single memory bus 556 is depicted inFIG. 5B, the system 545 can comprise any number of memory buses 556. Inone embodiment, each packet engine 548 can be associated with one ormore individual memory buses 556.

The NIC 552 can in some embodiments be any of the network interfacecards or mechanisms described herein. The NIC 552 can have any number ofports. The NIC can be designed and constructed to connect to any typeand form of network 104. While a single NIC 552 is illustrated, thesystem 545 can comprise any number of NICs 552. In some embodiments,each core 505A-N can be associated with one or more single NICs 552.Thus, each core 505 can be associated with a single NIC 552 dedicated toa particular core 505.

The cores 505A-N can comprise any of the processors described herein.Further, the cores 505A-N can be configured according to any of the core505 configurations described herein. Still further, the cores 505A-N canhave any of the core 505 functionalities described herein. While FIG. 5Billustrates seven cores 505A-G, any number of cores 505 can be includedwithin the system 545. In particular, the system 545 can comprise “N”cores, where “N” is a whole number greater than zero.

A core may have or use memory that is allocated or assigned for use tothat core. The memory may be considered private or local memory of thatcore and only accessible by that core. A core may have or use memorythat is shared or assigned to multiple cores. The memory may beconsidered public or shared memory that is accessible by more than onecore. A core may use any combination of private and public memory. Withseparate address spaces for each core, some level of coordination iseliminated from the case of using the same address space. With aseparate address space, a core can perform work on information and datain the core's own address space without worrying about conflicts withother cores. Each packet engine may have a separate memory pool for TCPand/or SSL connections.

Further referring to FIG. 5B, any of the functionality and/orembodiments of the cores 505 described above in connection with FIG. 5Acan be deployed in any embodiment of the virtualized environmentdescribed above in connection with FIGS. 4A and 4B. Instead of thefunctionality of the cores 505 being deployed in the form of a physicalprocessor 505, such functionality may be deployed in a virtualizedenvironment 400 on any computing device 100, such as a client 102,server 106 or appliance 200. In other embodiments, instead of thefunctionality of the cores 505 being deployed in the form of anappliance or a single device, the functionality may be deployed acrossmultiple devices in any arrangement. For example, one device maycomprise two or more cores and another device may comprise two or morecores. For example, a multi-core system may include a cluster ofcomputing devices, a server farm or network of computing devices. Insome embodiments, instead of the functionality of the cores 505 beingdeployed in the form of cores, the functionality may be deployed on aplurality of processors, such as a plurality of single core processors.

In one embodiment, the cores 505 may be any type and form of processor.In some embodiments, a core can function substantially similar to anyprocessor or central processing unit described herein. In someembodiment, the cores 505 may comprise any portion of any processordescribed herein. While FIG. 5A illustrates seven cores, there can existany “N” number of cores within an appliance 200, where “N” is any wholenumber greater than one. In some embodiments, the cores 505 can beinstalled within a common appliance 200, while in other embodiments thecores 505 can be installed within one or more appliance(s) 200communicatively connected to one another. The cores 505 can in someembodiments comprise graphics processing software, while in otherembodiments the cores 505 provide general processing capabilities. Thecores 505 can be installed physically near each other and/or can becommunicatively connected to each other. The cores may be connected byany type and form of bus or subsystem physically and/or communicativelycoupled to the cores for transferring data between to, from and/orbetween the cores.

While each core 505 can comprise software for communicating with othercores, in some embodiments a core manager (not shown) can facilitatecommunication between each core 505. In some embodiments, the kernel mayprovide core management. The cores may interface or communicate witheach other using a variety of interface mechanisms. In some embodiments,core to core messaging may be used to communicate between cores, such asa first core sending a message or data to a second core via a bus orsubsystem connecting the cores. In some embodiments, cores maycommunicate via any type and form of shared memory interface. In oneembodiment, there may be one or more memory locations shared among allthe cores. In some embodiments, each core may have separate memorylocations shared with each other core. For example, a first core mayhave a first shared memory with a second core and a second share memorywith a third core. In some embodiments, cores may communicate via anytype of programming or API, such as function calls via the kernel. Insome embodiments, the operating system may recognize and supportmultiple core devices and provide interfaces and API for inter-corecommunications.

The flow distributor 550 can be any application, program, library,script, task, service, process or any type and form of executableinstructions executing on any type and form of hardware. In someembodiments, the flow distributor 550 may any design and construction ofcircuitry to perform any of the operations and functions describedherein. In some embodiments, the flow distributor distribute, forwards,routes, controls and/ors manage the distribution of data packets amongthe cores 505 and/or packet engine or VIPs running on the cores. Theflow distributor 550, in some embodiments, can be referred to as aninterface master. In one embodiment, the flow distributor 550 comprisesa set of executable instructions executing on a core or processor of theappliance 200. In another embodiment, the flow distributor 550 comprisesa set of executable instructions executing on a computing machine incommunication with the appliance 200. In some embodiments, the flowdistributor 550 comprises a set of executable instructions executing ona NIC, such as firmware. In still other embodiments, the flowdistributor 550 comprises any combination of software and hardware todistribute data packets among cores or processors. In one embodiment,the flow distributor 550 executes on at least one of the cores 505A-N,while in other embodiments a separate flow distributor 550 assigned toeach core 505A-N executes on an associated core 505A-N. The flowdistributor may use any type and form of statistical or probabilisticalgorithms or decision making to balance the flows across the cores. Thehardware of the appliance, such as a NIC, or the kernel may be designedand constructed to support sequential operations across the NICs and/orcores.

In embodiments where the system 545 comprises one or more flowdistributors 550, each flow distributor 550 can be associated with aprocessor 505 or a packet engine 548. The flow distributors 550 cancomprise an interface mechanism that allows each flow distributor 550 tocommunicate with the other flow distributors 550 executing within thesystem 545. In one instance, the one or more flow distributors 550 candetermine how to balance load by communicating with each other. Thisprocess can operate substantially similarly to the process describedabove for submitting votes to an arbiter which then determines whichflow distributor 550 should receive the load. In other embodiments, afirst flow distributor 550′ can identify the load on an associated coreand determine whether to forward a first data packet to the associatedcore based on any of the following criteria: the load on the associatedcore is above a predetermined threshold; the load on the associated coreis below a predetermined threshold; the load on the associated core isless than the load on the other cores; or any other metric that can beused to determine where to forward data packets based in part on theamount of load on a processor.

The flow distributor 550 can distribute network traffic among the cores505 according to a distribution, computing or load balancing scheme suchas those described herein. In one embodiment, the flow distributor candistribute network traffic according to any one of a functionalparallelism distribution scheme 550, a data parallelism loaddistribution scheme 540, a flow-based data parallelism distributionscheme 520, or any combination of these distribution scheme or any loadbalancing scheme for distributing load among multiple processors. Theflow distributor 550 can therefore act as a load distributor by takingin data packets and distributing them across the processors according toan operative load balancing or distribution scheme. In one embodiment,the flow distributor 550 can comprise one or more operations, functionsor logic to determine how to distribute packers, work or loadaccordingly. In still other embodiments, the flow distributor 550 cancomprise one or more sub operations, functions or logic that canidentify a source address and a destination address associated with adata packet, and distribute packets accordingly.

In some embodiments, the flow distributor 550 can comprise areceive-side scaling (RSS) network driver, module 560 or any type andform of executable instructions which distribute data packets among theone or more cores 505. The RSS module 560 can comprise any combinationof hardware and software, In some embodiments, the RSS module 560 worksin conjunction with the flow distributor 550 to distribute data packetsacross the cores 505A-N or among multiple processors in amulti-processor network. The RSS module 560 can execute within the NIC552 in some embodiments, and in other embodiments can execute on any oneof the cores 505.

In some embodiments, the RSS module 560 uses the MICROSOFTreceive-side-scaling (RSS) scheme. In one embodiment, RSS is a MicrosoftScalable Networking initiative technology that enables receiveprocessing to be balanced across multiple processors in the system whilemaintaining in-order delivery of the data. The RSS may use any type andform of hashing scheme to determine a core or processor for processing anetwork packet.

The RSS module 560 can apply any type and form hash function such as theToeplitz hash function. The hash function may be applied to the hashtype or any the sequence of values. The hash function may be a securehash of any security level or is otherwise cryptographically secure. Thehash function may use a hash key. The size of the key is dependent uponthe hash function. For the Toeplitz hash, the size may be 40 bytes forIPv6 and 16 bytes for IPv4.

The hash function may be designed and constructed based on any one ormore criteria or design goals. In some embodiments, a hash function maybe used that provides an even distribution of hash result for differenthash inputs and different hash types, including TCP/IPv4, TCP/IPv6,IPv4, and IPv6 headers. In some embodiments, a hash function may be usedthat provides a hash result that is evenly distributed when a smallnumber of buckets are present (for example, two or four). In someembodiments, hash function may be used that provides a hash result thatis randomly distributed when a large number of buckets were present (forexample, 64 buckets). In some embodiments, the hash function isdetermined based on a level of computational or resource usage. In someembodiments, the hash function is determined based on ease or difficultyof implementing the hash in hardware. In some embodiments, the hashfunction is determined based on the ease or difficulty of a maliciousremote host to send packets that would all hash to the same bucket.

The RSS may generate hashes from any type and form of input, such as asequence of values. This sequence of values can include any portion ofthe network packet, such as any header, field or payload of networkpacket, or portions thereof. In some embodiments, the input to the hashmay be referred to as a hash type and include any tuples of informationassociated with a network packet or data flow, such as any of thefollowing: a four tuple comprising at least two IP addresses and twoports; a four tuple comprising any four sets of values; a six tuple; atwo tuple; and/or any other sequence of numbers or values. The followingare example of hash types that may be used by RSS:

-   -   4-tuple of source TCP Port, source IP version 4 (IPv4) address,        destination TCP Port, and destination IPv4 address.    -   4-tuple of source TCP Port, source IP version 6 (IPv6) address,        destination TCP Port, and destination IPv6 address.    -   2-tuple of source IPv4 address, and destination IPv4 address.    -   2-tuple of source IPv6 address, and destination IPv6 address.    -   2-tuple of source IPv6 address, and destination IPv6 address,        including support for parsing IPv6 extension headers.

The hash result or any portion thereof may used to identify a core orentity, such as a packet engine or VIP, for distributing a networkpacket. In some embodiments, one or more hash bits or mask are appliedto the hash result. The hash bit or mask may be any number of bits orbytes. A NIC may support any number of bits, such as seven bits. Thenetwork stack may set the actual number of bits to be used duringinitialization. The number will be between 1 and 7, inclusive.

The hash result may be used to identify the core or entity via any typeand form of table, such as a bucket table or indirection table. In someembodiments, the number of hash-result bits are used to index into thetable. The range of the hash mask may effectively define the size of theindirection table. Any portion of the hash result or the hash resultitself may be used to index the indirection table. The values in thetable may identify any of the cores or processor, such as by a core orprocessor identifier. In some embodiments, all of the cores of themulti-core system are identified in the table. In other embodiments, aport of the cores of the multi-core system are identified in the table.The indirection table may comprise any number of buckets for example 2to 128 buckets that may be indexed by a hash mask. Each bucket maycomprise a range of index values that identify a core or processor. Insome embodiments, the flow controller and/or RSS module may rebalancethe network rebalance the network load by changing the indirectiontable.

In some embodiments, the multi-core system 575 does not include a RSSdriver or RSS module 560. In some of these embodiments, a softwaresteering module (not shown) or a software embodiment of the RSS modulewithin the system can operate in conjunction with or as part of the flowdistributor 550 to steer packets to cores 505 within the multi-coresystem 575.

The flow distributor 550, in some embodiments, executes within anymodule or program on the appliance 200, on any one of the cores 505 andon any one of the devices or components included within the multi-coresystem 575. In some embodiments, the flow distributor 550′ can executeon the first core 505A, while in other embodiments the flow distributor550″ can execute on the NIC 552. In still other embodiments, an instanceof the flow distributor 550′ can execute on each core 505 included inthe multi-core system 575. In this embodiment, each instance of the flowdistributor 550′ can communicate with other instances of the flowdistributor 550′ to forward packets back and forth across the cores 505.There exist situations where a response to a request packet may not beprocessed by the same core, i.e. the first core processes the requestwhile the second core processes the response. In these situations, theinstances of the flow distributor 550′ can intercept the packet andforward it to the desired or correct core 505, i.e. a flow distributorinstance 550′ can forward the response to the first core. Multipleinstances of the flow distributor 550′ can execute on any number ofcores 505 and any combination of cores 505.

The flow distributor may operate responsive to any one or more rules orpolicies. The rules may identify a core or packet processing engine toreceive a network packet, data or data flow. The rules may identify anytype and form of tuple information related to a network packet, such asa 4-tuple of source and destination IP address and source anddestination ports. Based on a received packet matching the tuplespecified by the rule, the flow distributor may forward the packet to acore or packet engine. In some embodiments, the packet is forwarded to acore via shared memory and/or core to core messaging.

Although FIG. 5B illustrates the flow distributor 550 as executingwithin the multi-core system 575, in some embodiments the flowdistributor 550 can execute on a computing device or appliance remotelylocated from the multi-core system 575. In such an embodiment, the flowdistributor 550 can communicate with the multi-core system 575 to takein data packets and distribute the packets across the one or more cores505. The flow distributor 550 can, in one embodiment, receive datapackets destined for the appliance 200, apply a distribution scheme tothe received data packets and distribute the data packets to the one ormore cores 505 of the multi-core system 575. In one embodiment, the flowdistributor 550 can be included in a router or other appliance such thatthe router can target particular cores 505 by altering meta dataassociated with each packet so that each packet is targeted towards asub-node of the multi-core system 575. In such an embodiment, CISCO'svn-tag mechanism can be used to alter or tag each packet with theappropriate meta data.

Illustrated in FIG. 5C is an embodiment of a multi-core system 575comprising one or more processing cores 505A-N. In brief overview, oneof the cores 505 can be designated as a control core 505A and can beused as a control plane 570 for the other cores 505. The other cores maybe secondary cores which operate in a data plane while the control coreprovides the control plane. The cores 505A-N may share a global cache580. While the control core provides a control plane, the other cores inthe multi-core system form or provide a data plane. These cores performdata processing functionality on network traffic while the controlprovides initialization, configuration and control of the multi-coresystem.

Further referring to FIG. 5C, and in more detail, the cores 505A-N aswell as the control core 505A can be any processor described herein.Furthermore, the cores 505A-N and the control core 505A can be anyprocessor able to function within the system 575 described in FIG. 5C.Still further, the cores 505A-N and the control core 505A can be anycore or group of cores described herein. The control core may be adifferent type of core or processor than the other cores. In someembodiments, the control may operate a different packet engine or have apacket engine configured differently than the packet engines of theother cores.

Any portion of the memory of each of the cores may be allocated to orused for a global cache that is shared by the cores. In brief overview,a predetermined percentage or predetermined amount of each of the memoryof each core may be used for the global cache. For example, 50% of eachmemory of each code may be dedicated or allocated to the shared globalcache. That is, in the illustrated embodiment, 2 GB of each coreexcluding the control plane core or core 1 may be used to form a 28 GBshared global cache. The configuration of the control plane such as viathe configuration services may determine the amount of memory used forthe shared global cache. In some embodiments, each core may provide adifferent amount of memory for use by the global cache. In otherembodiments, any one core may not provide any memory or use the globalcache. In some embodiments, any of the cores may also have a local cachein memory not allocated to the global shared memory. Each of the coresmay store any portion of network traffic to the global shared cache.Each of the cores may check the cache for any content to use in arequest or response. Any of the cores may obtain content from the globalshared cache to use in a data flow, request or response.

The global cache 580 can be any type and form of memory or storageelement, such as any memory or storage element described herein. In someembodiments, the cores 505 may have access to a predetermined amount ofmemory (i.e. 32 GB or any other memory amount commensurate with thesystem 575). The global cache 580 can be allocated from thatpredetermined amount of memory while the rest of the available memorycan be allocated among the cores 505. In other embodiments, each core505 can have a predetermined amount of memory. The global cache 580 cancomprise an amount of the memory allocated to each core 505. This memoryamount can be measured in bytes, or can be measured as a percentage ofthe memory allocated to each core 505. Thus, the global cache 580 cancomprise 1 GB of memory from the memory associated with each core 505,or can comprise 20 percent or one-half of the memory associated witheach core 505. In some embodiments, only a portion of the cores 505provide memory to the global cache 580, while in other embodiments theglobal cache 580 can comprise memory not allocated to the cores 505.

Each core 505 can use the global cache 580 to store network traffic orcache data. In some embodiments, the packet engines of the core use theglobal cache to cache and use data stored by the plurality of packetengines. For example, the cache manager of FIG. 2A and cachefunctionality of FIG. 2B may use the global cache to share data foracceleration. For example, each of the packet engines may storeresponses, such as HTML data, to the global cache. Any of the cachemanagers operating on a core may access the global cache to servercaches responses to client requests.

In some embodiments, the cores 505 can use the global cache 580 to storea port allocation table which can be used to determine data flow basedin part on ports. In other embodiments, the cores 505 can use the globalcache 580 to store an address lookup table or any other table or listthat can be used by the flow distributor to determine where to directincoming and outgoing data packets. The cores 505 can, in someembodiments read from and write to cache 580, while in other embodimentsthe cores 505 can only read from or write to cache 580. The cores mayuse the global cache to perform core to core communications.

The global cache 580 may be sectioned into individual memory sectionswhere each section can be dedicated to a particular core 505. In oneembodiment, the control core 505A can receive a greater amount ofavailable cache, while the other cores 505 can receiving varying amountsor access to the global cache 580.

In some embodiments, the system 575 can comprise a control core 505A.While FIG. 5C illustrates core 1 505A as the control core, the controlcore can be any core within the appliance 200 or multi-core system.Further, while only a single control core is depicted, the system 575can comprise one or more control cores each having a level of controlover the system. In some embodiments, one or more control cores can eachcontrol a particular aspect of the system 575. For example, one core cancontrol deciding which distribution scheme to use, while another corecan determine the size of the global cache 580.

The control plane of the multi-core system may be the designation andconfiguration of a core as the dedicated management core or as a mastercore. This control plane core may provide control, management andcoordination of operation and functionality the plurality of cores inthe multi-core system. This control plane core may provide control,management and coordination of allocation and use of memory of thesystem among the plurality of cores in the multi-core system, includinginitialization and configuration of the same. In some embodiments, thecontrol plane includes the flow distributor for controlling theassignment of data flows to cores and the distribution of networkpackets to cores based on data flows. In some embodiments, the controlplane core runs a packet engine and in other embodiments, the controlplane core is dedicated to management and control of the other cores ofthe system.

The control core 505A can exercise a level of control over the othercores 505 such as determining how much memory should be allocated toeach core 505 or determining which core 505 should be assigned to handlea particular function or hardware/software entity. The control core505A, in some embodiments, can exercise control over those cores 505within the control plan 570. Thus, there can exist processors outside ofthe control plane 570 which are not controlled by the control core 505A.Determining the boundaries of the control plane 570 can includemaintaining, by the control core 505A or agent executing within thesystem 575, a list of those cores 505 controlled by the control core505A. The control core 505A can control any of the following:initialization of a core; determining when a core is unavailable;re-distributing load to other cores 505 when one core fails; determiningwhich distribution scheme to implement; determining which core shouldreceive network traffic; determining how much cache should be allocatedto each core; determining whether to assign a particular function orelement to a particular core; determining whether to permit cores tocommunicate with one another; determining the size of the global cache580; and any other determination of a function, configuration oroperation of the cores within the system 575.

F. Systems and Methods for Providing a Policy Group

Communications and data networks provide users access to networkresources, such as files, applications and services. To efficientlymanage and protect network resources, systems and methods are requiredto control access to protected and/or limited resources. As the types ofresources, networks, activities, communication protocols andclassification of users increase, access control schemes have becomeincreasingly complex. Access control schemes may involve, for example,any one or more of: authentication, authorization, certificatevalidation, access control lists (ACLs), access rules and/or policies,firewalls, load and/or power balancing, limited resource allocation,establishment of secure connections (e.g., SSL VPN), session reuse, userand/or user group permissions, and key encryption. Since various accesscontrol schemes may have to operate in conjunction to manage resources,it may be advantageous to appropriately aggregate a number of accessconfigurations into a policy group for access control purposes. Networkcomponents such as access gateways, firewalls, and authentication,authorization and auditing (AAA) servers may access and/or apply such apolicy group responsive to a request for a resource.

In some embodiments, an intelligent configuration of accessconfigurations may be referred to as a policy group. A policy group mayalso be referred to as an access configuration group or smart group. Apolicy group may be designed, built and/or configured to intelligentlyand logically aggregate a plurality of access configurations. A policygroup may aggregate a complementary and/or complex set of accessconfigurations for access control purposes. The policy group canlogically organize, arrange or relate the plurality of accessconfigurations according to access configurations types. The policygroup may systematically apply and/or evaluate the plurality of accessconfigurations based on the logical arrangement or relations. Forexample, in some embodiments, results from applying accessconfigurations of different types may be logically “AND'ed” together.

A policy group may include one or more levels of access configurations.A policy group may arrange the plurality of access configurations intolevels based on functionality, priority, etc. In some embodiments, apolicy group includes two or more components at the highest level, e.g.,criteria and resources. For example, criteria components may includelogin point, device profile and group access configurations. In someembodiments, a policy group may have one or more access configurationtypes and/or levels omitted or missing. A policy group may includedefault actions and/or properties for any access configuration typesand/or levels omitted or missing. A policy group may provide conflictresolution between access configurations.

In various embodiments, a policy group can be applied as a single modulecomprising policies, parameters, properties and settings from theplurality of access configurations. In some embodiments, one or morepolicy groups are identified for a user based on one or more accessconfigurations identified and/or evaluated for the user. Onceidentified, other associated access configurations from each of thesepolicy groups may be applied and/or evaluated. For example, a policygroup may be dynamically identified based on initial access controlactivities and results. A final access control decision may be assembledor reached based on evaluation of access configurations required by apolicy group. In some embodiments, a policy group can generate a morecomprehensive, optimal or appropriate access control decision. Thepolicy group may generate such an access control decision based oninteroperation of various levels and types of access configurations inthe policy group. The policy group may generate such an access controldecision based on the breadth, comprehensiveness, and synergisticinteraction of the access configurations in the policy group.

Referring now to FIG. 6A, one embodiment of a system 600 for providing apolicy group 677 for controlling access to network resources is shown.In brief summary, the system includes a network device which includes apolicy manager 667. The policy manager 667 includes, provides and/orapplies one or more policy groups. A policy group 677 may include one ormore access configurations. An access configuration may, for example, bedefined for a logon point, an identification of a resource and availablepermissions, a device profile 676 and/or a group name 688. Each logonpoint may be associated with at least one authentication method and anauthorization method.

In further details of FIG. 6A, the network device 200 may be, orinclude, any type or form of components associated with a network ornetwork node. For example and in one embodiment, the network device mayinclude features from any embodiment of the network appliance orintermediary device 200 described above in connection with FIGS. 1A-1D,2A, 2B, 4A, 4C and 5A. In various embodiments, the network device 200may be a standalone device, an attachment to a network component, or amodule of a network component. The network device 200 may be designed,built and/or configured to provide or control access to networkresources. The network device 200 may be designed, built and/orconfigured to allow a user to configure or reconfigure an accessconfiguration or policy group 677 for controlling access to networkresources. The network device 200 may provide any type or form ofinterface for a user or application to request access to a resource. Thenetwork device 200 may provide any type or form of interface for a useror application to configure or reconfigure an access configuration orpolicy group 677. The provided interface may include one or morefeatures of any embodiments of the interfaces 126, 127, 130, 210, 212,214 described above in connection with FIGS. 1E, 1F and 2A.

The network device 200 may include one or more policy managers. Each ofthe policy managers may be implemented as a virtual server on thenetwork device, such as a virtual server 275, 406 as described above inconnection with FIGS. 2B and 4A-4C. Each policy manager 667 may executeon one processor of a multi-core system as describes above in connectionwith FIGS. 5A-5C. In some embodiments, a policy manager 667 includes oneor more features of any embodiment of the policy engine 195, 236described above in connection with FIGS. 1D and 2A. In certainembodiments, a policy manager 667 provides functionality replacing orcomplementary to a policy engine. The policy manager 667 may comprisehardware or any combination of software and hardware. The policy manager667 may include an application, program, library, script, process, task,thread or any type and form of instructions for executing on hardware,e.g., a processor of the network device. The policy manager 667 mayinclude or communicate with one or more storage devices for storingand/or retrieving policy groups and/or access configurations. Each ofthe storage device may include features from any embodiment of thestorage devices 128, 122, 140, 232, 264, 442, 556, 580 described abovein connection with FIGS. 1D, 1E, 2A 4A, 5B and 5C. In some embodiments,one or more of the storage devices may be networked, for example,implemented as a storage area network (SAN).

The policy manager 667 may be designed and constructed to store,provide, serve, administer, manage, generate and/or configure policygroups 677 and/or access configurations. For example and in oneembodiment, an administrator configures a policy group 677 via aninterface of the policy manager 667. In some embodiments, the policymanager 667 may include a database management and/or retrieval systemfor organizing and retrieving available policy groups 677. The policymanager 667 may generate, identify, retrieve and/or apply one or moreapplicable policy groups responsive to a request for a resource. Forexample and in one embodiment, a policy manager 667 may identify andapply a policy group 677 responsive to a user's request to access anetwork file. In another embodiment, the policy manager 667 may identifyand provide a policy group 677 to an access gateway or other device thatreceives an access request, for application by the access gateway orother device.

In certain embodiments, a policy manager 667 coordinates and/or managesfunctionality provided by various network modules or services (e.g., anycombination of one or more of an AAA server, an access server, a loginpage web server, a storage device for resources and/or policies, and/ora collection agent for gathering information about a computingenvironment of a client device) in accordance with a policy group 677.In some embodiments, a policy manager 667 communicates with and/orcollects information from one or more of these network modules orservices to make a policy determination for access control in connectionwith a policy group 677. The system 600 and/or the policy manager 667may be preconfigured or pre-populated with one or more policy groups(e.g., basic or default policy groups) for deployment. These policygroups may be reconfigured and/or combined for deployment.

As discussed, a policy group 677 may include one or more accessconfigurations. In some embodiments, a policy group 677 may be referredto as a Smart Group. An access configuration may include, describeand/or specify features, requirements, rules and/or policies of one ormore access control schemes, e.g., for authentication, authorization,certificate validation, access control list (ACL) operation, managingapplication requirements, firewall operations, load and/or powerbalancing, limited resource allocation, establishment of secureconnections (e.g., SSL VPN), managing user and/or user grouppermissions, managing device requirements, session re-use, and keyencryption. In some embodiments, an access configuration may identify anetwork module or service that provides a feature, requirement,information, rule and/or policy for access control. Each accessconfiguration may belong to one of a plurality of types of accessconfigurations, e.g., a logon point type, a device profile type, aresource type, an IP address pool type, or a group name type. A policygroup 677 may include one or more access configurations of a particulartype. If a policy group 677 is configured without an accessconfiguration, or access configurations of a particular type, the policymanager 667 may provide default actions, access configurations, and/orpolicies in place of the absent access configuration(s).

In some embodiments, access configurations of a policy group 677 may beassigned, partitioned, grouped, or classified into one or morecomponents of the policy group 677. For example and in one embodiment,one component may include access configurations related to rules orcriterions, e.g., logon points 678, device profiles 676 and groups 688(or group names). Another component may include one or more accessconfigurations related to resources and access permissions (e.g., allow,deny, different levels of access) of these resources. A policy group 677can include none, one or multiple ones of the criterion-related orresource-related access configuration(s).

Each policy group 677 may logically combine, prioritize and/or manageone or more access configurations, e.g., of a same or different type. Apolicy group 677 may define or implement an “OR” logical operation orcombination for access configurations of the same type (e.g., deviceprofiles 676). For example and in one embodiment, application of apolicy group 677 having a laptop device profile 676 and a mobile deviceprofile, to a client device that is a laptop computer, may yield adetermination that the client device satisfies the OS requirements ofboth of these profiles. Thus, the policy group 677 may grant a level ofaccess to a requested resource based on satisfaction of either of theseprofiles. In another example, application of the same policy group 677to a client device that is a PDA phone may yield a determination thatthe client device satisfies the OS requirements of only the mobiledevice profile. The policy group 677 may grant the same level of accessto the requested resource by satisfying one of the device profiles 676,e.g., the mobile device profile.

A policy group 677 may define or implement an “AND” logical operation orcombination for access configurations of different types (e.g., betweena device profile access configuration 676 and a group name accessconfiguration 688). For example and in one embodiment, a policy group677 may grant access to a resource if both a 676 access configurationand a group name access configuration 688 are satisfied. By way ofillustration, if a policy group 677 having two logon points 678 (lp1,lp2) and one device profile 676 (dp1) is applied, the rule sentence foran access control decision may be logically represented as:

IF (lp1 OR lp2) AND dp1 THEN . . .

In another example and embodiment, if a policy group 677 having twologon points 678 (lp1, lp2) and two device profiles 676 (dp1, dp2) isapplied, the rule sentence for an access control decision may belogically represented as:

IF (lp1 OR lp2) AND (dp1 OR dp2) THEN . . .

In some embodiments, a policy group 677 includes one or more logon pointaccess configurations (hereafter sometimes generally referred to as“logon points”). A logon point 678 may represent an entry point to thesystem 600, a session and/or a connection, e.g., for accessing a networkresource. A logon point 678 may include a logon page or any type or formof interface (e.g., including one or more features of any embodiments ofthe interfaces 126, 127, 130, 210, 212, 214 described above inconnection with FIGS. 1E, 1F and 2A). A user may access a logon point678 via a URL or any type or form of web link, widget or icon. A logonpoint 678 may be identified or represented by a URL or any type or formof web link, widget or icon. For example and in one embodiment, a logonpoint 678 may be selected by selecting or clicking on a URL. One or morepolicy groups associated with a selected logon point 678 may beidentified for evaluation. In some embodiments, a subset of the one ormore identified policy groups are selected for evaluation responsive toone or more authentication and/or authorization methods 690 applied viathe logon point. In other embodiments, one or more policy groups areidentified for evaluation responsive to one or more authenticationand/or authorization methods 690 applied via the logon point.

In some embodiments, a policy group 677 may require at least one logonpoints 678 to be defined or configured for the policy group 677. Inother embodiments, a default logon point 678 may be assigned to a policygroup 677 without a defined or configured logon point. In still anotherembodiment, a policy group 677 without a defined or configured logonpoint 678 may be selected based on any logon point 678 accessed by auser (such as based on the associated authentication and/orauthorization results of the selected logon point). Properties definedfor a selected logon point 678 may override global properties. Forexample and in one embodiment, a selected logon point 678 may requiredual authentication instead of a single type of authentication requiredby global rules. Policy group 677 properties may override logon point678 and/or global properties.

A logon point 678 may be configured with one or more authenticationand/or authorization methods 690. For example and in some embodiments, alogon point 678 may have two authentication methods 699 associated withit, sometimes referred to as dual authentication. A logon point 678(e.g., via authentication and/or authorization) may require userinformation or user responses, such as user identification (user ID),password, answers to challenge questions, a Rivest, Shamir and Adleman(RSA) securID and/or biometric information. One or more authenticationmethods 699 and/or authorization methods 690 may be truncated, bypassed,or skipped based on identification of an access request as coming from atrusted source, an existing secure session and/or from within a securenetwork. In some embodiments, one or more authorization methods 690 maybe invoked or selected based on the authentication methods 699 selected(e.g., by the user). Table F1 shows one embodiment of the authorizationmethod selection process based on the selected authentication method(s).For example, if the authentication method selected is RSA, theauthorization methods 690 selected may include one or more of RSA,Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and active directory (AD).If the authentication method selected is Remote Authentication Dial InUser Service (RADIUS), the authorization methods 690 selected mayinclude one or more of RADIUS, LDAP and AD.

TABLE F1 Authorization Method Selection Authentication Authorization RSARSA, LDAP, AD RADIUS RADIUS, LDAP, AD AD LDAP, AD

In some embodiments, a logon point 678 may be disabled (e.g., by anadministrator, or accordingly to a schedule). Disabling a logon point678 may change the behavior of a policy group 677 associated with thelogon point. For example and in one embodiments, if an only logon point678 in a policy group 677 is disabled, the policy group 677 may becomedisabled. Such a policy group 677, if called or evaluated, may return anull set. In one embodiment, such a policy group 677 may lose itsability to grant or deny access to a resource. If there exists at leastone other logon point 678 that is not disabled in a policy group 677,the policy group 677 may be evaluated based on the at least one otheractive logon point 678 that is not disabled. In other embodiments, alogon point 678 may be enabled if all logon points 678 in the policygroup 677 are disabled, e.g., by incorporating global or default logonpoints 678.

In some embodiments, a logon point 678 may have one or more visibilitydevice profiles configured or attached to the logon point. The logonpoint 678 may have an evaluation attribute configured or attached to theone or more visibility device profiles. An evaluation attribute may beconfigured to apply either an ‘AND’ or ‘OR’ logical function between twoor more visibility device profiles. For example and in one embodiment,if the evaluation attribute is set to ‘AND’, the logon point 678 may bemade visible (e.g., available, enabled or active) if all of thevisibility device profiles are successfully evaluated or matched againstthe requesting client device. For example and in another embodiment, ifthe evaluation attribute is set to ‘AND’, the logon point 678 may berendered invisible (e.g., unavailable, disabled or inactive) if any oneor more of the visibility device profiles are unsuccessfully evaluatedor matched against the requesting client device.

The system 600, via the policy manager 667 or a collection agent, mayperform a scan or an end point analysis of the client device to gatherinformation (e.g., computing environment characteristics). The deviceinformation may be evaluated against the one or more visibility deviceprofiles to determine the visibility of the logon point. Deviceinformation may include, but is not limited to: device type, OS type andOS patch information, software application (e.g., web browser) and patchinformation, anti-virus software version and updates, firewallinformation, processor type and processing power, bus speeds andbandwidth, memory or storage information, whether the client device is atrusted device, machine ID of the client device, MAC or other address ofthe client node, installed network cards and other hardware, digitalwatermark associated the client device, membership in an ActiveDirectory, network connection information, client device certificatesand authorization credentials. For example and in some embodiments, aclient device's digital watermark may include data embedding. Thewatermark may include a pattern of data inserted into a file to providesource or copyright information about the file. The watermark mayinclude data hashing files to provide tamper detection. In someembodiments, network connection information pertains to bandwidthcapabilities. In other embodiments, network connection informationpertains to or include an Internet Protocol (IP) address.

In certain embodiments, if a device scan (or end point analysis) isinterrupted, cancelled or prematurely terminated, the correspondingdevice profile evaluation may be determined to be unsuccessful orincomplete. An error may be issued in some embodiments and a rescan maybe initiated. In some embodiments, a device profile 676 configured forvisibility purposes may be used for post-scan evaluation associated witha policy group 677. A visibility device profile may specify and/orrequire one or more client device attributes. Such client attributes maycover any aspect of device information gathered by a device scan, suchas those described above. A device scan may be initiated based on anyaccess control event, such as when an access request is received by thesystem, when a logon point 678 is selected, or when a policy group 677is identified. The network device may transmit a collection agent to theclient node to gather client information. The network device maycommunicate with the client device to collect information about theclient device. In some embodiments, a device scan may gather moreinformation than needed to evaluate a visibility device profile. Adevice scan may gather information according to a specified or standardlist of data to collect. A device scan may gather information based onapplication of one or more policies.

In some embodiments, a policy group 677 includes one or more deviceprofile access configurations. In some of these embodiments, theseaccess configurations may be referred to as device profiles 676 forpost-scan evaluation. These access configurations may be the same as, oradapted from visibility device profiles described above. In someembodiments, a post-scan device profile 676 may be distinct from avisibility device profile. Post-scan device profiles 676 may beevaluated against information being collected and/or already collectedfrom a device scan. A device profile 676 may specify and/or require oneor more client device attributes. Such client attributes may cover anyaspect of device information gathered by a device scan. A device profile676 may specify and/or require (e.g., via policies) certain operationalcapabilities and/or security features in a client node.

Post-scan device profiles 676 may be used as part of a policy group 677to determine access permissions for a client device. In someembodiments, a policy group 677 may not be associated with any deviceprofile access configurations. In certain embodiments, if a selectedpolicy group 677 is not configured with any device profiles 676, deviceprofiles 676 may simply be excluded from corresponding access controldecisions. In other embodiments, a default and/or global device profilemay be applied in connection with a selected policy group 677 which isnot configured with any device profiles 676.

A user may be identified with one or more groups based on theauthentication and/or authorization methods 690 applied. Based on theidentification, one or more policy groups 677 associated with the one ormore groups may be used to make an access control policy determinationfor the user. In some embodiments, a policy group 677 may be associatedwith one or more groups. The one or more groups 688 may each beidentified by a group name. A group name may include any alpha-numericand/or special characters. In some embodiments, a group name may becase-insensitive. In certain embodiments, the system may extract one ormore group names 688 from a name of a policy group 677. In otherembodiments, the system should not use the name of a policy group 677 toinfer or extract group names 688 associated with the policy group 677.

A group 688 may include or identify one or more users. A group 688 mayidentify one or more attributes of a users. A user having the one ormore identified attributes may be associated with or assigned to thegroup. If a user requesting access to a resource is associated with agroup 688 identified in a policy group 677, the policy group 677 may beapplied to determine access control for the user. If a group 688 isassociated with multiple policy groups, all or some of these policygroups may be applied to determine access control for the user. Forexample and in one embodiment, if a number of policy groups areconfigured with a group 688 associated with the user, and a deviceprofile 676 that matches a client device operated by the user, thesystem may apply all of these policy groups to determine access controlfor the user.

In some embodiments, a policy group 677 is associated with at least onegroup or group name 688. In certain embodiments, if a policy group 677is not defined or configured with a group 688 (or group name), thepolicy group 677 may inadvertently allow access, e.g., becausegroup-related policies are not activated. In some of these embodiments,the system may disable the policy group 677, or reconfigure the policygroup 677 to return a null set (e.g., rather than making a potentiallyinvalid access control decision). This may prevent accidental securitybreaches. Therefore, for example, if a policy group 677 is configuredwith a Management group name and an administrator accidentally removesthe Management group name from the policy group 677, the system maydisable the policy group 677 to avoid having users automatically gainingpermissions for this policy group 677. In some embodiments, if a policygroup 677 is not configured with at least one group 688, a default groupmay be attached to the policy group 677, e.g., until a group 688 isconfigured for the policy group 677.

A policy group 677 may specify one or more applicable resources orresource types in a resource access configuration 655. Each resource orresource type may have a plurality of levels of access, or accesspermissions, associated with it. In some embodiments, the system maysupport access permissions comprising at least “allow” or “deny”. Inother embodiments, if access is allowed, one of a plurality of levels ofaccess is granted based on the policy group evaluation. The system mayaudit or keep track of the availability of a resource or resource type.The system may modify a resource access configuration 655 according tothe availability of the resource or resource type. A default or globalaccess permission for a resource or resource type may be specified. Apolicy group 677 having a resource access configuration 655 may overridethis default or global access permission.

A resource access configuration 655 may support a resource of type“any”, which may represent a wildcard for any resource. For example andin some embodiments, an administrator may use such a resource accessconfiguration 655 to build basic policy groups that applies to anyresource. In some embodiments, in the absence of any configured resourceaccess configuration 655 in a policy group 677, an implicit default orglobal property may deny all resource requests as applied to the policygroup 677. Such an implicit default or global property may be referredto as a “deny all” property or policy. A “deny all” property or policymay be assigned a lower priority during policy group 677 evaluation,e.g., with respect to a defined resource access configuration 655. Insome embodiments, if a policy group 677 is not configured with anyidentified resources or resource types, the policy group 677 implicitlydenies access to all or some of the requested resources. In otherembodiments, if a policy group 677 is not configured with any identifiedresources or resource types, the policy group 677 may allow access tosome resources or resource types based on global, default or logon point678 level policies or parameter settings.

Referring now to FIG. 6B, one embodiment of a data model for a policygroup 677 is depicted. A policy group 677 may include one or more datastructures configured and stored by the network device. The one or moredata structures may be dynamically reconfigured by an administratorand/or by an application. In some embodiments, one of the datastructures is associated with one or more other data structures via anytype or form of memory or database links and/or pointers. For exampleand in one embodiment, a policy group 677 may have a Smart Group datastructure 630 associated with access configuration data structures forresources 631, groups 638, device profiles 635, logon points 633 and/orIP address pools 640. An IP address pool may be any type or form ofcollection of IP addresses, e.g., intranet or virtual IP addresses (IIP)assigned to a user and/or device operated by a user. The IP addresses inthe IP address pool may be assigned to a user and/or device, e.g., forthe duration of a user session or session for accessing a resource.These IP addresses may be reused, e.g., upon termination of a session.

In some embodiments, a login point may be associated with one or moredevice profiles 676. For example, this may be as depicted in FIG. 6B bythe association of the logon point 678 data structure 633 and deviceprofile data structure 635. In one embodiment, a particular logon point678 (e.g., web interface) may be available based on one or more types ofdevices or device profiles 676 (e.g., visibility device profiles). Inanother embodiment, a logon point 678 may require particular devicetypes or device profiles 676, e.g., for authentication and/orauthorization to be successful. In still another embodiment, a logonpoint 678 may, upon authenticating a user, authorize the user if theuser is using a device having or satisfying an identified deviceprofile. In certain embodiments, one or more groups may be identifiedwith a user upon authentication. This may, for example, be depicted inFIG. 6B by the association of the authentication method data structure639 and the group data structure 638.

By way of illustration, and not intended to be limiting in any way, auser at a client device may attempt to logon to the system 400 and/or asession to access a resource. The user may select and/or access a logoninterface via a uniform resource locator (URL). The URL may beassociated with a logon point. The login point may be associated withone or more policy groups. One or more authentication and/orauthorization methods 690 may be associated with or attached to aselected logon point. The user may be authenticated based on the one ormore authentication methods 699 of the selected logon point. The user'sauthorization rights may be evaluated and/or determined by the one ormore authorization methods 690 of the selected logon point. Based on theauthentication and/or authorization, the user may be identified asbelonging to or associated with one or more groups. Each group may beassigned a group name. Based on the identified groups, group names,requested resource and/or login point, the system may identify one ormore policy groups for controlling the user's access to the requestedresource. A client device operated by the user may be evaluated againstone or more device profiles 676 described or identified by each of theidentified policy groups. A policy group 677 may grant the user accessto the resource based on the authentication, authorization, identifiedgroups, device profile evaluation and/or requested resource.

In some embodiments, access control may be managed more efficientlyusing policy groups. Access control may be managed more efficientlyusing policy groups as compared to individual policies and/or policynodes in a decision tree. Each access configuration may include one ormore related policies and/or elements of access control schemesdescribed above. Each access configuration can be modularly constructedand administered. Each access configuration can be associated with or beincluded in a plurality of policy groups. One or more policy groups maybe assembled or configured using one or more access configurations. Anumber of policy groups may also be reconfigured or updated via one ormore shared access configurations.

In some embodiments, one or more applicable policy groups may beidentified for each user as the user is authenticated and/or authorized.An administrator can define one or more properties for a policy group677. Such properties may include actions (e.g., deny, grant full access,or grant a level of access, based on evaluation of the policy group677), priority with respect to other policy groups, identification oftime periods during which the policy group 677 is active, etc. Definedpolicy group 677 properties may override properties that are defined atthe global and/or logon point level. In the absence of an applicable orsuitable policy group 677, one or more default global accessconfigurations, logon point policies or policy groups may be applied.Furthermore, fine-grained access control may be applied by logicallycombining various access configurations in a policy group 677. Eachpolicy group 677 may, for each resource, grant one of a plurality oflevels of access to the user, based on an aggregated set of accessconfigurations. Each access configuration of a policy group 677 mayprovide different and/or complementary access control features withrespect to other access configurations of the policy group 677. Forexample and in some embodiments, multiple authentication methods 699 maybe embodied in two or more access configurations.

Moreover, one policy group 677 may have a higher priority over anotherpolicy group 677. In some of these embodiments, a user associated withmultiple policy groups may be granted access permissions based on ahigher priority or higher level policy group 677. Accordingly, there arevarious benefits as well as flexibility in configuring, administeringand applying policy groups.

In some embodiments, an establishing an initial configuration for apolicy group 677 includes appending or associating (e.g., by anadministrator via a policy group 677 interface) an authentication methodto a logon point 678 (e.g., default login point). The administrator maycreate a new policy group 677 (e.g., Smart group data structure via thepolicy manager 667). The administrator may add the logon point 678 tothe policy group 677 as an access configuration. The administrator may,in configuring a resource access configuration 655, define a resource oftype “Any”. The administrator may set access permissions for suchresources to “allow” and/or specify a plurality of levels of accessavailable to these resources. The administrator may save this initialconfiguration of the policy group 677, e.g., via a policy manager 667.

In some embodiments, and by way of illustration, an administrator maywant to configure a policy group 677 for controlling access to a networksegment (e.g., 10.20.30.0/24 network segment). The administrator mayrequire access to the network segment be authenticated. Theadministrator may add or associate one or more authentication method toa default logon point. The administrator may create or configure a newdevice profile 676 based on, e.g., OS type, browser type, etc. Theadministrator may create or configure an access configuration for anetwork segment resource pointing to network segment 10.20.30.0/24. Theadministrator may create a new policy group 677 (e.g., Smart group datastructure via the policy manager 667). The administrator may add thelogon point 678 to the policy group 677 as another access configuration.The administrator may add the device profile 676 to the policy group 677as yet another access configuration. The administrator may add an accessconfiguration for the network segment resource to the policy group 677.The administrator may save these configurations into the data structureof the new policy group 677.

As discussed above, the system may support one or more globalconfigurations. Each global configuration may be associated with acluster of network devices providing or managing access to networkresources. In some embodiments, each global configuration may beassociated with a cluster of gateways, appliances or any other networknodes managing access to resources via one or more policy groups 677.Each global configuration may include one or more access-relatedproperty, parameters or attributes (hereafter generally referred to as“parameters”). These parameters or attributes may act as defaultconfigurations, e.g., in the absence of access configurations providedby a policy group 677 and/or logon points 678. Table F2 shows oneembodiment of parameters available at the global, policy group 677and/or logon point levels. In some embodiments, parameters at the policygroup level, if available or supported, overrides correspondingparameters at the global and/or logon point level. Parameters at thelogon point level, if available or supported, may override correspondingparameters at the global level. Table F3 shows another embodiment ofparameters available at the global and policy group levels. The systemmay predefine priority between a plurality of available policy groupsand global parameters. In some embodiments, where more than one policygroups are applicable, the highest priority policy group 677 mayoverride the corresponding parameter values of the other policy groups677. In certain embodiments, the system may predefine priority between aplurality of (user) groups associated with policy groups. Where morethan one policy groups are applicable, the policy group 677 having thehighest priority group may override the corresponding parameter valuesof the other policy groups.

TABLE F2 One embodiment of supported Parameters (access-related) PolicyLogon Attribute/Parameter Global group point Comments Split Tunneling XX Allow older Access Gateway X plug-in Close Connection X X RequireSecure Client Certificate X Validate Internal Secure X For example,accessing from Certificate an Access Gateway into internal network.Client Connection Encryption X Enable Internal Failover X Disable LogonPage X For example, for use in Authentication Policy Group Mode Auth.after network interrupt X X Auth. upon system resume X X Enable SingleSign-on (SSO) X X with Windows User session time-out X X X The time(e.g., in minutes) specifying how long user may be connected to securenetwork. Network inactivity time-out X X X Access Gateway may disconnectif there are no packets coming from the client for a specified time(e.g., in minutes). Idle session time-out X X X For example, a usersession may time out if there is no mouse, keyboard and/or otheractivity. Split Domain Name Service X X (DNS) Landing page X X

TABLE F3 An embodiment of Global Parameters in view of Policy GroupParameters Over- ride Feature/ by Parameter Glob- Policy Name al GroupsComments Enable Split X X In case of conflicting values, Split TunnelingTunneling may be disabled, unless otherwise provided by grouppriorities. Access control lists may be removed from this item. Allowolder X Access Gateway plug- in Web session X X The smaller between thetwo time-out timeout values may be selected, unless otherwise providedby group priorities. May require support from group priorities and/ordefault values. Enable X May not be configurable by incorrectAdministrator. password cache Deny access May be hardcoded to TRUE. Maynot be without access configurable by Administrator. control list CloseX X May be linked to Split Tunneling. This connections feature relatedto accessing from an Access Gateway into an internal network. Requiresecure X client certificates Validate X This setting may be applied on aresource- internal secure by-resource basis. certificates Client X Thedefault may be set to RC4. connection encryption type (RC4 | AES | 3DES)Enable internal X failover Enable X May be set to true. May not beapplication configurable by Administrator. acceleration Enable logon XThis setting may be configured for each page logon point. authenticationAuthenticate X X May be desirable at the group level. after networkinterruption Authenticate X X upon system resume (hibernate) Enablesingle X X May be added to a management interface sign-on with WindowsRun logon X X scripts User session X X time-out Network X X inactivitytime- out Idle session X X time-out Deny X X The default setting may be“disable”. applications without policies Enable split X X DNS Enable IPPools X X May require support from group priorities and/or defaultvalues. Kill X X This feature may be the same as or similar connectionsto “close connections”. May not be configurable by Administrator. Usecustom X X If implemented at the group level, this portal page featuremay require prioritization. May not be configurable by Administrator.Redirect to X X If implemented at the group level, this Web Interfacefeature may require prioritization. May require support from grouppriorities and/ or default values. Use multiple X X logon option page

Referring now to FIG. 6C, a flow diagram depicts embodiments of stepstaken in a method 650 for establishing and/or providing a policy group677 to control a user's access to a resource. The method includesestablishing, via a policy manager 667 executing on a deviceintermediary to a plurality of clients and one or more servers, a policygroup 677 representing an aggregate of one or more access configurationsfor a user to access via the device one or more identified resources ofthe one or more servers (601). The policy group 677 includes a loginpoint component representing an entry point to access the one or moreidentified resources. The method includes configuring, via the policymanager 667, the login point component to specify a uniform resourcelocator for the entry point (603). The method includes selecting, viathe policy manager 667, one or more authentication methods 699 for thelogin point component (605). The method includes identifying, via thepolicy manager 667, one or more authorization methods 690 for the loginpoint component based on the one or more authentication methods 699(607). The method includes specifying, via the policy manager 667, forthe policy group 677 one or more device profiles 676 (609). Each of theone or more device profiles 676 may identify one or more types of endpoint analysis to perform on a device of the user. The method includesspecifying, via the policy manager 667, for the policy group 677 a typeof resource of the one or more identified resources that is allowed ordenied access (611). The device receives a request from a user to accessa uniform resource locator corresponding to the entry point specified bythe login point component (613). The device initiates one or moreauthentication methods 699 for the user specified by the login pointcomponent (615). The device applies, based on the one or moreauthentication methods 699 initiated, one or more authorization methods690 specified by the login point component to access the one or moreidentified resources (617).

In further details of (601), an administrator, user or application(hereafter sometimes generally referred to as “user” for illustrationpurposes) may establish a policy group 677 representing an aggregate ofone or more access configurations for a user to access via the deviceone or more identified resources, e.g., of one or more servers. The usermay establish the policy group 677 via a policy manager 667 executing ona device intermediary to a plurality of clients and one or more servers.The user may establish the policy group 677 via an interface of thepolicy manager 667. The policy group 677 may include a login pointcomponent representing an entry point to access the one or moreidentified resources. In some embodiments, the user establishes thepolicy group 677 from another pre-configured policy group 677. The usermay establish the policy group 677 from a policy group 677 template, oneor more access configurations, and/or from an initial configuration of apolicy group 677.

In some embodiments, a user establishes a policy group 677 byestablishing one or more access configurations, e.g., of type resource,device profile, group, logon point, etc. A user may establish a policygroup 677 by incorporating, assembling or adding one or more accessconfigurations into the policy group 677. In some embodiments, an accessconfiguration is created or configured independent of any policy groups(e.g., even though the access configuration is later added to a policygroup 677). A user may first configure one or more access configurationsbefore establishing a policy group 677 to include the one or more accessconfigurations. A user may establish a policy group 677 by using one ormore global parameters and/or policies. A user may establish a policygroup 677 by using one or more default properties, parameters and/orpolicies. A user may establish a policy group 677 responsive to thecreation, definition or availability of a resource or resource type. Thesystem may establish a policy group 677 for a resource or resource typein response to one or more requests to access the resource or resourcetype. A user may establish a policy group 677 responsive to creating anew group or user group. A user may establish one or more policy groupsto enable the device to handle or make access control decisions for aresource.

In further details of (603), the user may configure, via the policymanager 667, the logon point component to specify a uniform resourcelocator (URL) for the entry point. In some embodiments, a login point isconfigured prior to establishing a policy group 677 (e.g., independentof any identified policy group). A user may specify or select a URL torepresent, identify and/or access the logon point. The user may specifyor select a web link, icon or application widget to represent, identifyand/or access the logon point. The user may select or adapt one or aplurality of pre-configured logon points 678 for a policy group 677. Auser may associate or configure a policy group 677 with one or morelogon points 678. A user may select, create and/or configure a logonpoint 678 via an interface of the policy manager 667. The user mayestablish a second login point component for the policy group 677. Theuser may configure a second uniform resource locator as the entry pointfor the second login point.

In some embodiments, the user associates or configures a device profilecomponent 676 for a login point component. The user may establish apolicy group 677 to have a device profile component 676 related to thelogin point component. The device profile component 676 may identify anend point analysis to perform on a client device to determine access,e.g., via the entry point of the login point component. For example andin one embodiment, the device profile 676 may be configured to requirecertain information to be gathered from a client node requesting accessto a resource, e.g., computing environment characteristics of the clientnode. In some embodiments, the user selects one or more authenticationand/or authorization methods 690 for the login point based on the deviceprofile 676 associated or configured for the login point.

In some embodiments, a user may specify for a login point one or moreparameters that override one or more corresponding properties (e.g.,settings, parameters, rules and/or policies) of the device or policygroup 677. For example and in some embodiments, a user may specify for alogin point one or more properties that override default or globalproperties of the device. In certain embodiments, a user may disable alogin point. In some of these embodiments, the policy group 677 maybecome disabled responsive to disabling the login point, e.g., whenthere are no other enabled logon points 678 in the policy group 677. Insome embodiments, a policy group 677 may remain enabled after disablinga login point component of the policy group 677. For example and in oneembodiment, a default or global logon point 678 may be assigned to thepolicy group 677 responsive to disabling a login point of the policygroup 677.

Referring to (605), the user may select, via the policy manager 667, oneor more authentication methods 699 for the login point component. Theuser may select an authentication method for controlling access to aresource. For example and in one embodiment, the user may identify anauthentication method to control a user's access to a resource. The usermay select an authentication method to establish the identity of a userrequesting access to a resource. The user may select, create, adaptand/or configure one or more authentication methods 699 for a loginpoint, e.g., via an interface of the policy manager 667.

In some embodiments, the user may select an authentication method basedon a device profile 676 associated with the logon point. The user mayselect an authentication method based on a desired security level orother requirement of the login point or policy group 677. The user mayselect an authentication method based on one or more authorizationmethods 690 associated with the configured login point or establishedpolicy group 677. In some embodiments, the user may specify twoauthentication methods 699, e.g., dual authentication for the loginpoint component.

In further details of (607), the user may identify, via the policymanager 667, one or more authorization methods 690 for the login pointcomponent based on the one or more authentication methods 699. The usermay identify an authorization method to provide policy-based evaluationof a request for a resource. In some embodiments, the user may identifyan authorization method to determine access conditions or requirementsfor a resource. The user may select, identify, create, adapt and/orconfigure one or more authorization methods 690 for a login point, e.g.,via an interface of the policy manager 667. The user may select anauthorization method based on a device profile 676 associated with thelogon point. The user may select an authorization method based on adesired security level or other requirement of the login point or policygroup 677.

The user may select an authorization method based on one or moreauthentication methods 699 associated with the configured login point orestablished policy group 677. In some embodiments, the user may specifyone or more authorization methods 690 in accordance with Table F1discussed above. The policy manager 667 may limit selection ofauthorization methods 690 based on the selection of the one or moreauthentication methods 699. The policy manager 667 may limit selectionof authorization methods 690 based on the type of end-point-analysissupported or selected. The policy manager 667 may limit selection ofauthorization methods 690 based on one or more groups identified withthe user.

In further details of (609), the user may specify, via the policymanager 667, for the policy group 677 one or more device profiles 676.The user may specify, select and/or configure a device profile 676 viaan interface of the policy manager 667. The user may specify a deviceprofile 676 based a configured logon point. In some embodiments, theuser may select one or more device profiles 676 from a plurality ofavailable device profiles 676. The user may configure one or more deviceprofiles 676 from a default or basic set of device profiles 676. Theuser may specify a device profile 676 based on one or more accessconfigurations of the policy group 677. For example and in oneembodiment, the user may specify a device profile 676 based on a logonpoint 678 configured for the policy group 677.

Each of the one or more device profiles 676 may identify one or moretypes of end point analysis or scan to perform on a device of the user.Each of the one or more device profiles 676 may identify information tobe gathered from a client device of a user requesting access to aresource. A device profile 676 may identify information to be comparedagainst a client device and/or a computing environment of the clientdevice. The user may specify a device profile 676 based on the type ofend-point-analysis or scan supported or selected. In some embodiments,the user may specify a device profile 676 based on one or more groupsidentified with the user. The user may specify a device profile 676based on one or more authentication and/or authorization methods 690associated with the configured login point or established policy group677.

In some embodiments, the user may specify a visibility device profile676 to determine whether to enable a logon point. The user may specify adevice profile 676 to determine the security features and/or othercapabilities of a requesting client node. The user may specify a deviceprofile 676 to provide policy-based evaluation of a request to access aresource. The user may identify a device profile 676 to determine accessconditions or requirements for a resource. In certain embodiments, theuser may specify a device profile 676 to determine or identify amatching device type of a requesting client.

Referring to (611), the user may specify, via the policy manager 667,for the policy group 677 a type of resource of the one or moreidentified resources that is allowed or denied access. The user mayspecify and/or configure a resource access configuration 655 for use inone or more policy groups. The user may identify a resource and/or aresource type for access control. The user may identify a resourceand/or resource type via an interface of the policy manager 667. In someembodiments, the user may identify a resource type or class based onfunctionalities, features and/or characteristics of one or moreresources. The user may identify a global resource type or class, e.g.,“Any” representing any resource or resource type. In certainembodiments, the user may specify or configure access rights (e.g.,allow, deny, levels of access) available or assignable to a resourceand/or resource type. For example and in one embodiment, the user mayspecify or configure access rights based on one or more device profiles676 configured for a logon point 678 and/or policy group 677.

The user may specify, select and/or configure a resource accessconfiguration 655 via an interface of the policy manager 667. The usermay specify a resource access configuration 655 based a configured logonpoint. The user may select one or more resource access configuration 655from a plurality of resource access configurations. In some embodiments,the user may configure one or more resource access configuration 655from a default or basic set of resource access configurations. The usermay specify a resource access configuration 655 based on another accessconfiguration of the policy group 677. For example and in oneembodiment, the user may specify a resource access configuration 655based on a device profile 676 configured for the policy group 677.

In further details of (613), the device may receive a request from auser to access a uniform resource locator corresponding to the entrypoint specified by the login point component. The device may receive orintercept a packet or message from a network of the device. The devicemay receive or intercept a packet or message from a network nodeconnected to the device, e.g., an access server or firewall. The devicemay receive or intercept a request from a client device of a user. Thedevice may receive a request from a user or application via an interfaceof the policy manager 667. The device (e.g., via a policy manager 667)may identify a policy group 677 comprising a login point componentrepresenting an entry point to access the one or more identifiedresources. The device may provide the user one or more selectable URLs,web links and/or widgets to select a logon point, e.g., responsive tothe request. The user may select a logon point 678 based on the one ormore URLs, web links and/or widgets.

In some embodiments, an end-point analysis may be initiated on theuser's client device, e.g., responsive to receiving a request.Information collected from the end-point analysis may be evaluatedagainst one or more visibility device profiles. Information collectedfrom the end-point analysis may be evaluated to identify one or morelogon points 678 to enable for the user. Information collected from theend-point analysis may be cached or stored for evaluation against one ormore device profiles 676, e.g., to be identified in connection with oneor more applicable policy groups. Information collected from theend-point analysis may be used by one or more authentication and/orauthorization methods 690 selected for the user.

In some embodiments, the device may identify one or more policy groupsbased on the request. For example and in one embodiment, the device mayselect a policy group 677 identified in the request. The device mayidentify a policy group 677 based on application of a policy on therequest. In some embodiments, the device may identify a policy group 677based on the resource requested. The device may receive or extract anURL identified as the entry point to a login component of the policygroup 677. The device may identify a policy group 677 and/or login pointbased the URL received in the request. In certain embodiments, thedevice may receive or extract an URL identified as the entry point to asecond or subsequent login component of the policy group 677.

The device may identify a policy group 677 based on the entry pointand/or logon point 678 identified in the request. The device mayidentify a policy group 677 based on default (or global) policies and/orsettings. In some embodiments, the device may direct the request to oneof a plurality of policy managers, e.g., each executing on a processorof a multi-core system such that those discussed above in connectionwith FIGS. 5A-5C. The device may direct the request to one or aplurality of policy managers via a flow distributor, packet engineand/or load balancing module of the device.

In some embodiments, the device may defer identification of a policygroup 677 until one or more access configurations have been applied orevaluated. For example and in some embodiments, authentication and/orauthorization may be processed to identify a group for the user. Apolicy group 677 may be determined based at least in part on theidentified group of the user. In some embodiments, a device profile 676may be evaluated based on the selected logon point. A policy group 677may be identified based at least in part on one or more accessconfigurations selected, evaluated and/or identified for the request. Aplurality of policy groups may be initially identified responsive to arequest but some of the plurality of policy groups may be eliminatedfrom evaluation based at least in part on one or more accessconfigurations selected, evaluated and/or identified with the request.In certain embodiments, a default policy group 677 may be identified ifno applicable predefined policy groups are identified to process anaccess request.

In further details of (615), the device may initiate one or moreauthentication methods 699 for the user specified by the login pointcomponent. The device may initiate one or more authentication methods699 based on application of a policy, e.g., using a policy manager 667or policy engine. The device may initiate one or more authenticationmethods 699 for the user based on a logon point 678 selected orprovided. In some embodiments, the device may initiate twoauthentication methods 699 specified by the login point component fordual authentication. The device may initiate one or more authenticationmethods 699 based on evaluation of a first authentication method, e.g.,for additional security. One or more of the authentication methods 699may involve some combination of a user ID, a password, a RSA securID, acertificate, other user information and/or biometric data. The policymanager 667 may communicate and/or interoperate with an access server orAAA server in applying the one or more authentication methods 699.

Referring to (617), the device may apply, based on the one or moreauthentication methods 699 initiated, one or more authorization methods690 specified by the login point component to access the one or moreidentified resources. The device may select and/or initiate one or moreauthorization methods 690 based on application of a policy, e.g., usinga policy manager 667 or policy engine. In some embodiments, the devicemay initiate one or more authorization methods 690 for the user based ona logon point 678 selected or provided. The device may initiate one ormore authorization methods 690 based on one or more authenticationmethods 699 selected, e.g., as discussed above in connection with TableF1. The device may initiate dual authentication for the user. One ormore of the authorization methods 690 may evaluate information gatheredduring an end-point analysis. One or more of the authorization methods690 may be applied on information included in the access request. Thepolicy manager 667 may communicate and/or interoperate with an accessserver or AAA server in applying the one or more authorization methods690.

In some embodiments, the selection of one or more authorization methods690 is limited to the specification of the one or more authenticationmethods 699. The selection of one or more authentication methods 699 maybe limited to the specification of the one or more authorization methods690. The selection of one or more authorization methods 690 may besynergistic and/or appropriate to the one or more authentication methods699 selected. In some other embodiments, the selection of one or moreauthorization methods 690 is not limited to the specification of the oneor more authentication methods 699. In some embodiments, the selectionof one or more authentication methods 699 may not be limited to theselection of the one or more authorization methods 690.

In some embodiments, one or more device profiles 676 may be identifiedbased on the one or more authentication and/or authorization methods 690selected. The policy manager 667 may identify a device profile componentof the policy group 677. The device profile component 676 may include orspecify one or more device profiles 676 for access via the entry pointof the login point component. One or more types of end point analysis orscan may be identified or specified by the one or more device profiles676. One or more types of end point analysis or scan may be initiated bythe one or more device profiles 676. The device may perform, on a clientor second device of the user, one or more types of end point analysis orscan specified by one or more device profiles 676 of the device profilecomponent. In certain embodiments, one or more groups may be furtheridentified for the user based on the one or more authentication and/orauthorization methods 690 applied. One or more policy groups may beidentified for the user, e.g., based on any one or more of the logonpoints 678, device profiles 676 and groups identified.

In some embodiments, the device overrides one or more parameters of thedevice as specified by a policy group 677. For example and in oneembodiment, the policy group 677 may override one or more global ordefault properties, parameters, policies, settings and/or featuresassigned to the device or a cluster of devices. The device and/or thepolicy manager 667 may identify and evaluate one or more policies basedon global or default settings, e.g., if not specified or covered by anyapplicable policy group 677. The device and/or the policy manager 667may evaluate the one or more policy groups and/or global or defaultsettings to determine if any access permissions may be granted.

The device and/or the policy manager 667 may grant access to one or moreresources identified in the request, e.g., based on the evaluation ofthe one or more policy groups. The device and/or the policy manager 667may grant access to a type of resource of the one or more identifiedresources. The device and/or the policy manager 667 may grant one of aplurality of levels of access to an identified resource or a type ofresource. In some embodiments, the device and/or the policy manager 667may grant one of a plurality of levels of access to an identifiedresource and another one of the plurality of access to anotheridentified resource. In certain embodiments or situations, the deviceand/or the policy manager 667 may deny access to an identified resource.The device and/or the policy manager 667 may deny access to a type ofresource of the one or more identified resources.

In some embodiments, a policy group 677 may grant access to a requestedresource while another policy group 677 denies or grants a differentaccess permissions to the resource. The device may provide access to aresource based on the access permissions granted by a higher prioritypolicy group 677. In some embodiments, the policy manager 667 mayprovide access permissions to a resource if the access permissionsgranted by different policy groups are not inconsistent with eachanother. A policy manager 667 may decide to deny access to a resource ifany of the policy groups denies access to the resource.

By way of illustration, a policy group 677 may require that when aclient device's application software matches some or all attributes of adevice profile, the client node may receive a transformed version of thecontents of a requested file. The client node may receive an executablefile enabling connection to a transformation server, which may presentthe contents of the file in a format accessible to the client devicetype. In some embodiments, a policy group 677 may prohibit download of arequested file to the client node, e.g., if a client device is not atrusted device, do not contain the appropriate application software,and/or is from an insecure network such as an Internet kiosk. In thisembodiment, the policy group 677 might require that the device transmitsan executable file to the client node enabling connection to anapplication server for presentation of the file contents. The specifiedaccess permissions may enable the client node to view the contents ofthe file without jeopardizing proprietary contents of the file frominappropriate dissemination. In another embodiment, a policy group 677may require that a client device make a secure connection to access therequested resource. In some embodiments, a policy group 677 may requirethe user's client device to re-use or access an existing orpreviously-assigned session to access a resource.

It should be understood that the systems described above may providemultiple ones of any or each of those components and these componentsmay be provided on either a standalone machine or, in some embodiments,on multiple machines in a distributed system. In addition, the systemsand methods described above may be provided as one or morecomputer-readable programs or executable instructions embodied on or inone or more articles of manufacture. The article of manufacture may be afloppy disk, a hard disk, a CD-ROM, a flash memory card, a PROM, a RAM,a ROM, or a magnetic tape. In general, the computer-readable programsmay be implemented in any programming language, such as LISP, PERL, C,C++, C#, PROLOG, or in any byte code language such as JAVA. The softwareprograms or executable instructions may be stored on or in one or morearticles of manufacture as object code.

While the invention has been particularly shown and described withreference to specific embodiments, it should be understood by thoseskilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be madetherein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention asdefined by the following claims.

We claim:
 1. A system comprising: a device intermediary to a pluralityof clients and one or more servers; a policy manager configured on thedevice to establish a policy group to represent one or more accessconfigurations for accessing one or more resources of the one or moreservers, an interface of the policy manager configured to receive aconfiguration of a login point of the policy group that specifies auniform resource locator to access the one or more resources; whereinthe interface of the policy manager is configured to receive a selectedauthentication method from a plurality of authentication methods toconfigure for the login point; and wherein the interface of the policymanager is configured to provide a selection of one or moreauthorization methods assigned to the selected authentication methodfrom a plurality of authorization methods configured on the device, theselection of one or more authorization methods assigned to the selectedauthentication method is different from a second selection of one ormore authentication methods assigned to a second authentication methodof the plurality of authentication methods.
 2. The system of claim 1,wherein the interface of the policy manager is further configured toreceive the selection of an authorization method of the one or moreauthorization methods assigned to the selected authentication method. 3.The system of claim 1, wherein the policy manager is further configuredto limit the selection of an authorization method via the interface tothe one or more authorization methods assigned to the selectedauthentication method.
 4. The system of claim 1, wherein eachauthentication method of the plurality of authentication methods isassigned at least one authorization method from the plurality ofauthorization methods.
 5. The system of claim 1, wherein the policygroup comprises a device profile associated with the login point, thedevice profile identifying an end point analysis to perform for accessvia the login point.
 6. The system of claim 1, wherein the policy groupcomprises a second login point specifying a second uniform resourcelocator as a second entry point.
 7. The system of claim 1, wherein theinterface of the policy manager is further configured to receiveselections of two authentication methods for dual authentication of thelogin point.
 8. The system of claim 1, wherein the policy groupspecifies a type of resource of the one or more resources that isallowed access.
 9. The system of claim 1, wherein the policy groupspecifies a type of resource of the one or more resources that is deniedaccess.
 10. The system of claim 1, wherein the policy group identifiesthe one or more resources.
 11. A system comprising a device intermediaryto a plurality of clients and one or more servers; a policy group,configured on the device, to represent one or more access configurationsfor accessing one or more resources of the one or more servers, whereinconfiguration of a login point of the policy group specifies a uniformresource locator to access the one or more resources; wherein the deviceis configured to receive a request from a client to access a uniformresource locator of a server of the one or more servers corresponding tothe login point of the policy group; wherein the device is configured toinitiate, responsive to the request and the policy group, anauthentication method specified by the login point from a plurality ofdifferent authentication methods configured on the device; and whereinthe device is configured to select an authorization method from one ormore authorization methods selected and assigned to the authenticationmethod via configuration of the login point, selection of the one ormore authorization methods assigned to the authentication method isdifferent from a second selection of one or more authentication methodsassigned to a second authentication method of the plurality ofauthentication methods.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein the deviceis further configured to identify a device profile of the policy groupassociated with the login point, the device profile identifying an endpoint analysis to perform for access via the login point.
 13. The systemof claim 11, wherein the device is further configured to initiate theend point analysis on the client responsive to the request.
 14. Thesystem of claim 11, wherein the device is further configured to initiatetwo authentication methods responsive to the requested based on thelogin point specifying dual authentication.
 15. The system of claim 11,wherein the device is further configured to receive a second requestcomprising a second uniform resource locator, the device furtherconfigured to identify the second uniform resource locator as a secondentry point of the login group.
 16. The system of claim 11, wherein thedevice is further configured to identify from the policy group the oneor more resources to which the client has access to.
 17. The system ofclaim 11, wherein the device is further configured to allow access bythe client to a resource responsive to the policy group specifying atype of resource of the one or more resources that is allowed access.18. The system of claim 11, wherein the device is further configured todeny access by the client to a resource responsive to the policy groupspecifying a type of resource of the one or more resources that isallowed access.
 19. The system of claim 11, wherein the device isfurther configured to limit selection of an authorization method in theconfiguration of the login points to the one or more authorizationmethods assigned to the authentication method from a plurality ofdifferent authorization methods configured on the device.
 20. The systemof claim 11, wherein each authentication method of the plurality ofdifferent authentication methods is assigned at least one authorizationmethod from a plurality of different authorization methods configured onthe device.